Gravity
by notmanos
Summary: Post X2: Logan makes a stunning decision to get to the root of his problem with the Organization, while Bob tracks down Jean but doesn't find what he expects.
1. Part 1

Disclaimer:The character of Wolverine & the X Men is owned by 20th Century Fox and Marvel Comics. No copyright infringement intended. The characters of Angel are owned by 20th Century Fox and Mutant Enemy. Bob and his bunch are all mine.  
  
N.B.: Takes place shortly after "X2", and directly after The Falling Sky.  
  
_________  
  
GRAVITY  
  
_________  
  
1  
  
Marcus knew someone had broken into his building the instant he approached the door.  
  
Always sealed, it was actually slightly ajar, with what appeared to be pry marks gouged into the side. What sorry sack of shit for brains decided to break into his building? He almost felt sorry for them. Not so sorry he wouldn't beat the living fuck out of him and dangle them from the roof by one ankle, though.  
  
He nudged the door open with his shoulder and entered quietly, listening carefully for any odd noises and scanning the foyer for anything out of place. It all looked normal, all bland, matte steel and exposed concrete, and none of the metal doors on the first floor (which were all painted brick red, for unclear reasons) were ajar or otherwise insecure. It was quiet too, which wasn't that odd for a Thursday afternoon.  
  
Oh joy - had the burglar gone upstairs? He hoped he'd broken into his place. It would make things easier overall.  
  
He slid the plastic bag of groceries down to his wrist, and used his teeth to pull off one of his suede gloves as he stealthily crept up the stairs. He impressed himself when he dropped the glove into the grocery sack without having to use either hand - he was getting too good at this.  
  
The upper floor looked clear too, but when he approached his door … oh, hallelujah, gouge marks in the door frame. The stupid fuck did break into his place. It was the last idiotic thing he would ever do.  
  
Marc remained stealthy until he reached the door, and then threw open the door violently, instantly tossing the grocery bag aside, freeing his hands for a fight.  
  
A pointless gesture. Sitting on the floor, with his back against the sofa and the coffee table shoved out, so he could sit with his knees tented up, arms wrapped around them, was Logan. That explained the claw marks.  
  
"What the fuck man?" He asked, kicking the door shut with his foot and going to retrieve his bag. "I was all geared up for a good fight here."  
  
"Sorry. I couldn't afford to be seen in front of your place, I had to come in," Logan said, and his voice was oddly low and beaten. He was resting his chin on his knees, and had yet to look up.  
  
As Marc retrieved the bag, he studied Logan curiously, creeping closer. It was Logan, right, not just a guy wearing a ton of hair spray?  
  
When he was within five feet of him, he got his first whiff of blood. "Shit, you got in a fight?"  
  
When Logan looked at him, Marcus was so shocked he almost took a step back. It wasn't the blood that spattered his face like Jackson Pollock had tried to make him a canvas, or the fact that his white (and it was white, not red like he initially thought) t-shirt was half blood slowly turning a rust color in the air, or even the fact that it looked like there were still minute flecks of skin …and holy shit, was that brain?.. on the shirt as well - it was his eyes.  
  
Red rimmed and hollow, he had the empty, thousand yard stare of a long time prisoner of war, or a mental patient. The person who had been there had checked out; the thing left in his place was a being who had suffered to the point where it saw the world through nothing but the filter of its own pain. "Jesus fucking Christ," he gasped, unable to help himself. That wasn't Logan's brain on his shirt, was it?! Unconsciously, he reached for the Tec 9 in the concealed holster on the back waistband of his jeans. "Where are they? Are they still around?" Who the fuck could do this to Logan, and why did he think he had a real chance against them?  
  
"They killed her," he said, swallowing hard. Marc watched his Adam's Apple bob restlessly beneath the skin of his throat, and he suddenly realized he was trying not to cry or vomit. Maybe both. "That was the whole point. She lived to die, to teach me a lesson."  
  
"Who died?" He asked, wondering if Logan was in shock. His healing ability only worked on physical shock, none of the other kinds.   
  
"Leonie."  
  
Okay, he had missed something. Was that the name of one of the students? "Who?"  
  
"My daughter."  
  
Oh fuck. "You had a kid?"  
  
For some reason, Logan made a noise that was a kind of a laugh, but with no strength in it at all, it could have been mistaken for an aborted whimper. "In a manner of speaking. They wanted to prove that they still controlled me, so they let her go, and killed her in front of me. She was bait; she was just a reminder I would never escape from them."  
  
"Wait, wait," he said, slinging his bag of groceries into the nearest chair, and re-holstering his gun. "They? Are we talking the Org here?"  
  
"Who else?" Logan continued to stare through him, hollow eyed and in perfect agony. Marc could almost see his sanity draining away, a light fading behind his eyes. "Every time I think I beat 'em, I don't. They're not going away, and they won't take me on. They could, that's all right, but they decide that's not good enough. They have to kill people around me, they have to take the battle to them, and I can't save 'em; I just get to watch them die, and know it's my fault-"  
  
"It isn't your fault," Marcus interrupted sharply. "They did the killings; them. Don't let them pin this on you."  
  
"It is my fault. She lived only to be an example for me."  
  
He shook his head, and tried to piece this together. He would have loved to have asked Logan what the fuck he was on about, but he was indeed shock-y and ranting, trying to keep his sanity while it frayed around him. He didn't see how killing anyone could get to Logan that much, except maybe it wasn't the actual killing, just the fact that he was rendered so impotent and powerless to stop it.   
  
And of course it was his daughter's brains all over his shirt. Fuck.  
  
He wasn't sure what he could do to help him, or why Logan had even come here, although he realized that it was, in its way, a compliment. He trusted him, and obviously thought he could help him more than Xavier. But how? "Logan, are you hurt?" He asked, although he knew it was a silly question. Even if he was, he'd heal.  
  
He scoffed. "I should have been."  
  
So all the blood on him wasn't his own. She really must have took a devastating shot, and he must have been in very close range of her when it happened. "Did you get a look at the shooter?"  
  
"No. They shot me in the head with an adamantium bullet - it may have been the same one that collapsed her skull, I don't know. I was out for a minute or so."  
  
Only Logan would walk away from a direct head shot. Him and that metal skull of his; gave new meaning to being thick headed. Obviously, his daughter wasn't loaded with metal. "Where did this happen? Couldn't have been Baltimore."  
  
"New York."  
  
"You drove here covered in blood and -" If he said brains, he didn't know how Logan would react, so he quickly said, "-gunpowder? Does Xavier know about this?"  
  
"He knows," he said, looking away from his direction. He wasn't sure Logan had really ever seen him anyways. "I had to get away before they spread out. I hoped they tailed me, but I saw no sign of it."  
  
"You hoped you led them to my place?" Not so comforting, that.  
  
"No. I gave them the opportunity to take me, but they didn't. They're playing mind games with me."  
  
And they were winning, judging from Logan's state. "Okay. What can I do to help you out here?"  
  
Finally, Logan seemed to look at him, for the very first time. "I need a location, Marc. I need to know a likely place where I can find them."  
  
All right then, not all the fight had been kicked out of him - he wanted to hunt them down. "Okay, I'll see what I can pull together. Why don't you clean up, huh? And take whatever you want from my closet, I don't care ..." And he didn't; he really didn't want to look at someone's brain matter anymore. Normally it didn't bother him all that much, but then again, it was usually the brain matter of someone who deserved to have their skull split like a piñata. He couldn't see a girl (how old was she?) ever deserving that.  
  
"I don't wanna clean up," Logan said, anger suddenly animating his face. "I want to find those fuckers and be outta here."  
  
"Yeah, but unless you just want me pullin' a location outta my ass, it's gonna take me some time to collate the recent data, and frankly I don't want blood-" Brains. "-all over my couch." Maybe being short with him right now wasn't the best thing; the anger that now gave Logan a look of life was the belligerent, aimless kind, the kind that just wanted someone to hurt and didn't care who or what it was.  
  
But after a moment, Logan glanced away, down at the floor, and his posture seemed to sag in absolute surrender. Jesus Christ - even when he was suicidally depressed, he was not like this. At least then he hated himself; now it seemed like that was too much to muster up.  
  
Holy fucking Christ, the Organization had finally done it.  
  
They had broken him.  
  
***  
  
At least when Logan went, zombie like, to take a shower, it not only gave Marc time to boot up his laptop and put the groceries away (well, his ice cream was melting - and while he cared more about Logan than a dairy product, this was still Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream, and it was always semi-solid at best anyways), but also time to make some phone calls. He was hoping the sound of the shower would keep Logan from hearing him. Still, he kept his voice low.  
  
"Marcus," Xavier said as soon as he picked up the phone, sounding stressed. "This is not a good time."  
  
"Yer fucking telling me it's not a good time?" He exclaimed, grabbing a beer out of the fridge. "Do you have Logan with brains on his shirt camping out in your loft?"  
  
Xavier sucked in a sharp breath, then continued. "Dear god. He came to you?"  
  
"Yeah, he did, and I've never seen him this way - he's a fucking wreck. You know what happened to his kid?"  
  
"Yes. He called me from a pay phone shortly after the incident. He simply told me they had killed her, without elaborating. I tried to convince him to come back, but there was so much pain ..." He trailed off, and Marc wondered if Xavier had tried to "read" Logan over the phone. That was probably a nasty business he wouldn't soon repeat. "I sent Ororo after him, but by the time she arrived he was long gone. I was afraid he'd gone into hiding again."  
  
"Do we even know it was the Org? There are disturbed people nowadays ..."  
  
"Yes, we know. They left a note at the scene. A note for Logan."  
  
From the way he let the pause drag out, he knew Xavier wasn't going to tell him what was on it, but he supposed it was some variety of "Neener neener neener". "So they did kill her to send a message to him?"  
  
"That poor girl," Xavier said, sounding equally pained and angry. "I was afraid Logan would drop out entirely, fearing proximity to him would endanger us. But he needs to come back - we can protect him."  
  
Marcus kicked the refrigerator door shut and retreated to the couch, to see how his search program was coming along. "No, I don't think you can. Bob can, but according to Helga, he's away on some Higher Realm business. Must be serious, 'cause he even blew off a lunch date with Amaranth, and you don't want to piss off that little witch." He'd called Bob first - it seemed like the wisest course of action. If only he had been home …  
  
He didn't tell Hel what he was calling about, even though she asked and offered to help. He didn't know the complete story, and besides, it was Logan's story to tell.  
  
"That's a bit harsh."  
  
That puzzled him for a moment. "Naw, I meant she's a witch, man - an actual spell slinging witch. Apparently she's good at it, and intimidating, in that Aussie way."  
  
"Oh." Xavier now sounded puzzled. Maybe he didn't know there were such things as actual witches either.   
  
Marc sat on the edge of his couch, and saw his search program had churned up fifteen potential locations, based on a variety of factors. Due to variables he couldn't quite eliminate from the system, the majority of these locations were wrong, or simply legitimate military facilities. It was always up to him to look at them and figure out what the best bets were. "If you're asking me to send him back, the answer is no. I can take care of him here, at least until Bob shows up."  
  
"They want him to be isolated," Xavier insisted. "If he is alone, he is extremely vulnerable. He is playing into their hands."  
  
"He's not alone. I'm here."  
  
He paused for so long Marc felt insulted. "But you are just one man. Here -"  
  
"There there are kids, who Logan obviously doesn't want involved in this. Maybe I ain't some super duper hero like the rest of you, but I am a one man army myself, you know. That's why I'm paid the big bucks."  
  
"I don't want you to encourage him to-"  
  
"Encourage him to what?" He snapped impatiently, indignant on Logan's behalf. "He isn't one of your kids. He's a grown man who can decide for himself what he wants to do."  
  
"He's a deeply wounded man whose just had his daughter murdered in front of him," Xavier replied coldly. "He is not in a rational state of mind, and I fear he could do something that he will regret."  
  
"Like what, hunt these bastards down?"  
  
Another pause, this one thick with disapproval. "That could be just what they want. Violence solves nothing; it just begets more violence -"  
  
"Damn right, and they "begot" this when they blew that little girl's head off. If he wants to slice 'em to pieces for it, I'll hold their arms while he does it." He couldn't believe that Xavier would even consider letting anything quite this horrible slide. Nonviolence was a wonderful philosophy, but sometimes it was unrealistic at best. Maybe he'd have felt differently if Logan had showed up at his place with pieces of his daughter all over him and howling madness in his eyes.  
  
"Revenge will not help him," Xavier said, as if he were a child missing an important point. "He will walk into another trap. He will be on the path they set for him."  
  
'Yeah, well, excuse me if I have a little faith in Logan's ability to handle himself. Maybe you should try it sometime." And with that, he shut his cell phone, breaking the connection. That was a pointless phone call.  
  
He shoved the cell back in his pocket, and focused on the list of likely names currently on his computer. He had to narrow this down to the most likely candidates, and normally he needed time and lots of caffeine to do this properly. But this was an emergency, so he was just going to have to knuckle down, trust his gut, and maybe mangle a few other clichés along the way.  
  
Because another second these bastards lived was a second too long.  
  
***  
  
It was always blood, wasn't it? A river, an ocean of blood, an eternal sea of it. Sometimes it was his own, but mostly it was the blood of others.  
  
That was what was swirling down the drain right now. Logan watched as he sat at the bottom of Marc's shower, seeing how Leonie's blood contrasted nicely with the blue veined marble tiles that lined the bathtub and shower walls. The water pounding down on him was cold, and had   
  
been for some time, but he didn't care. Maybe, eventually, it would grow so cold it would turn his skin numb, and his outside would match his inside.  
  
He had two choices, neither of which were good. The most logical thing to do would be disappear again, vanish, just drop out of society again and live like a fugitive, hoping they never caught up with him again. But - damn him, damn him! - he had gotten soft, and was tired of living in fear, tired of sleeping in his goddamn truck (he didn't even have a truck anymore) or at fleabag motels; he was so fucking done with all of that shit. And someone would try and find him: Yasha, Xavier, certainly Bob. He would not have anonymity for long.  
  
But if he stayed where he was, who died next? Yasha, Xavier, Rogue, Marcus? (The moment the Organization shifted its focus to Bob was the moment the Organization died, full stop, end of story.) Maybe they'd just use a surface to surface missile or a few rocket propelled grenades on the school - that would teach them to associate with a scumbag like Wolverine. And the Organization was making it nice and clear: they owned him. And they could do what they wanted to him whenever they wanted. But take the battle to him? No, that was yesterday's news. Today's warfare called for terrorism, and what qualified more than systematically killing everyone who had the misfortune to feel sorry for him?  
  
Leonie was only the beginning. He was not an idiot, no matter what the general consensus was. Leonie's death was a warning shot across the bow. They had declared war on not just him, but everyone in his life. Logan knew he could not, in good conscience, allow them to suffer for what he had done, for what he was. No one should have to suffer because of him; enough people already had.  
  
That was why Logan had come here. Option number two was the only one open to him. Technically, there was a third option, the one he allowed Marc to believe - that he wished to find them and kill them for killing Leonie. And he did wish to kill them, and silently vowed to her that they would. They would pay in blood for spilling hers.  
  
But not today. He had tried to take them on before, and not alone, but that was never something that could play out in his favor. They had been neutralizing mutants for years; they had neutralized him for years. If he cared about any of the people in his life, even peripherally, there was only one thing he could do: take the second option, and save their lives, get their necks off the chopping blocks. He would have to leave revenge for another day, but it would come, no matter what they did to him.  
  
Logan leaned back against the slick tiles, letting the cold water pelt his face, but he wasn't numb; his healing factor was even countering this, damn it. He wondered if it was even in him to do this.  
  
Remarkably, yes it was. He was so bone weary of all of this, this endless fight against an implacable foe. But he knew he never would have even considered it if everyone else's lives weren't on the line.  
  
Logan would surrender to the Organization, and find out why the fuck they wanted him so bad, once and for all. 


	2. Part 2

2  
  
He was in the shower so long Marcus was starting to wonder if Logan had slashed his wrists and healed up again. With him, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility.  
  
His healing ability probably kept him from looking like a prune too, although he should have. At least Logan had been aware enough to not pick out any of his really good clothes; he just went with an olive drab t-shirt and jeans, both of which had seen better months. But at least there weren't blood and brains on them. Although he now wasn't covered in blood, Logan really didn't look that much better.  
  
"Got anything for me?" Logan asked, not so much sitting on the couch as collapsing upon it.   
  
"Yeah. I'm still narrowing the list down." He held out the can of beer to Logan, but he made no move to take it. Marc finally shoved it in his face, and Logan snatched it from his hand, scowling at him. He never thought he'd see the day when Logan would frown on a beer.  
  
"How many have you got?"  
  
"At the moment? Six probable, three on the North American continent."  
  
"Where are the others?"  
  
"One's in South America, another is in Russia, and the third is in Europe."  
  
"They're here," Logan said glumly, closing his eyes. "I know they're close."  
  
Marcus just nodded, studying the data. It was a combination of oddities from the surveillance satellites he was able to (illegally) tap into, certain radio and microwave frequencies, and traffic on illegal (and legal) weapons and materials, mostly from trusted but anonymous "inside sources". He had no one on the inside of the Org just yet, but it was only a matter of time.   
  
Logan cracked open his beer, and Marcus was mildly relieved. At least he was doing something almost normal. "So what's the plan, big guy?" Marc asked, just trying to keep him talking. "I've got a new grenade launcher I'm just dying to try out."  
  
"I'm goin' in alone."  
  
Marcus scoffed. "The fuck you are."  
  
"I'm gonna do this alone. No more people are gettin' hurt because of me."  
  
"Yer gonna get hurt because of you," he pointed out. "You can't do it alone, man. You know that."  
  
"I have a plan."  
  
"And what is that?"  
  
Logan was silent, and when Marc glanced at him, he was conveniently drinking his beer and looking away, staring blankly at the dead eye of the television screen. He still didn't look good, but something had resolved in his expression; he was still gut shot, but he had figured out a way to keep his intestines from falling out. Now that he had made up his mind as to what he needed to do, the shock had started to fade.   
  
Logan finally looked back at him, and said, "You wouldn't like it."  
  
Marcus raised an eyebrow at that, aware that Logan was probably being honest. "Why wouldn't I like it, Logan? How bad is it?"  
  
"I have to do this," Logan said, not arguing with him - he had clearly decided not to; he could see it in his eyes.  
  
Marcus noted, in the back of his mind, that Logan had the funniest eyes. They were more or less green, but sometimes they looked darker, more hazel than green, and sometimes they were so light green they were almost blue. And if the constant shifting of color wasn't puzzling enough, it was the fact that no matter how macho a guy he was, his eyes were these strangely naked things - every single thing he felt played out there clearly, for everyone to see. Logan must have known, he could squash it down quick, or switch to his standard look (on most people that was neutrality; on Logan, it was mild irritation, verging on pissed off), but he didn't even bother to hide it right now: he was angry, but more than anything, he was weary. It was impossible to imagine that Logan would ever get tired of fighting, but maybe he finally had.  
  
Marc had no idea why, but that thought scared him.  
  
"I'm going with you," he insisted. "You go alone, you'll be lucky to be killed. You know that."  
  
"I want to … I have to do this by myself. It was my daughter, Marc. I don't want or need company."  
  
He did wonder what that was like. To have a child just show up and lose them, just like that, to have their head exploded by a bullet while you were just standing there … talking? What were they doing? Where had this happened?  
  
Logan could be a pretty hard man - he had to be, didn't he? - but he did everything hard: fight, survive, feel. He felt for that girl, and even if he didn't quite love her, he cared for her enough that her death was already haunting him. It must have been hard to be Logan.  
  
"What happened?" Marc asked, curiosity finally getting the better of him. "How old was she? Who was her mother? Do ya got more-"  
  
"Ask Xavier," Logan interrupted, pain flashing through his now greenish brown eyes until they solidified into anger. "I need to get moving as soon as I can." His voice was sharp, but brittle. Marc knew if he pushed, Logan might explode; it was too raw right now, too soon after the fact. Logan couldn't talk about her or what exactly had happened, not yet, possibly never.  
  
"I can't let you go alone."  
  
"Yes you can." Logan stared at him hard, and Marcus stared back, wondering if they really were going to have to find out which one was more stubborn. But Logan seemed to remember that Marc was controlling the data (did he know for sure he wouldn't send him to a Kwik-Stop in Modesto if he pissed him off? And that was a damn good thought …) "What I have to do … it won't be pretty."  
  
"Most of what I do ain't pretty. I can take it."  
  
"But I don't want you to," Logan replied, with pained vehemence. "I don't want anyone to see me like that. Sometimes I ... I lose it. I need to be by myself." He was almost desperate with the need for Marcus to see it, and Marc felt his stomach twist.  
  
He looked away, back at the blue light of the laptop screen, because he couldn't close his eyes. Logan would see it, would know what it meant or simply take it wrong, which might actually be better, because he'd already figured Logan loathed pity. But he did feel shit sorry for him. He'd found family and had it ripped away from him in a single moment of savage violence, violence pinned somehow to his checkered past. How could he not feel sorry for him?   
  
"Give me five days," Logan said, his voice quiet and strained, almost but not quite pleading.  
  
To his own surprise, Marc replied, with equal solemnity, "You got three."  
  
And that was it, all they needed to say to each other about that topic. Logan had three days, starting from the moment he walked out Marc's door, and Marc knew he'd be counting the hours, impatiently watching the clock, armaments packed up and waiting to go. Maybe he'd leave a couple hours ahead of the deadline, because hey, what was a few hours between friends?  
  
He knew he'd probably regret this. The words he told Xavier were coming back to haunt him: 'Yeah, well, excuse me if I have a little faith in Logan's ability to handle himself." If he wasn't a complete fucking liar, he was going to have to suck it up now, and let Logan do what he had to do. But he didn't have to like it.  
  
And he only had to keep to the spirit of his promise, not to its exact nature. Logan would have his time alone with them - and then it was his turn.  
  
3  
  
Even now, it seemed like his beloved road blindness had abandoned him. The hum of the tires along pavement, even at speeds too impossible to be sane, was like an annoying white noise eating at his brain, and his body felt heavy with gravity, like his bones were accumulating more adamantium, like he was somehow leeching it from the air and absorbing it through his skin. If he concentrated, he could almost feel the flakes of metal in his traitorous, sluggish blood.  
  
Logan didn't want to think about it, but found himself mentally going over the crime scene anyways. The birds had stopped singing at about the time he stood up - why hadn't he noticed that? There was no glint of sun off the glass of a sight, no flash of laser targeting, so he had to assume the shooter was a mutant with excellent, perhaps telescopic sight, or a normal gifted with some kind of targeting equipment Logan was unaware of; and if the sniper picked out a good hiding place in the trees (and he was sure that was the angle of the shot - from the wooded jogging path), he could have kept sunlight from glinting on the glass of a scope. Only the bullet that hit him smelled adamantium; hers smelled titanium. Why waste expensive ammunition on a target that didn't require it?  
  
He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to rewind it all and view it again and again, like some conspiracy junkie viewing the Zapruder film over and over again. (Her last words were "Yeah, they're gonna be sorry they ever let me go, huh?" Couldn't have been more ironic if they had scripted it. They had never let her go either; she was released simply as a lesson, nothing more. They obviously had no use for her anyways, beyond that. Perhaps what Xavier's friend had found, that "genetic conflict" that shortened her life and possibly her long term memory, had made her a fatally flawed project.)  
  
He was filled with an aimless rage that made him want to hurt something very, very badly; he wanted to rip out someone's throat with his teeth, smash his hand into someone's face until even his healing factor was at a loss as to how to deal with the swelling of his knuckles … but what would that prove? Would it bring her back? Would it make them pay? Would it even make him feel better for more than a couple seconds?  
  
That was the worst part - he didn't think he'd ever feel better.  
  
His stomach was empty, and rumbled with some regularity, but he didn't stop to eat because he knew he couldn't; he only drank that beer at Marc's because he thought he tasted blood in his mouth. He'd been on the road for hours, chasing an indifferent sun, and he was weary beyond the telling of it. But he also knew this was probably one of his last days of freedom for a while, and did he really want to waste it?  
  
Of course, he was ultimately counting on Bob to free him. No matter what they did to him, Bob would find his avatar, yes? And that was the end of that base. They couldn't neutralize a god, and certainly not a pissed off one. And he assumed Bob could reverse everything they did to him, although he supposed if they wiped out his memory engrams again, Bob couldn't restore what wasn't there, but maybe that wouldn't be so bad. If he never had to remember Leonie's head exploding like a melon shot by a thirty aught six, that would be great by him.  
  
But, you know, if this was going to be his last day of freedom until Bob got his butt back to Earth, well hell, wasn't there someone he'd like to see?  
  
As soon as he saw a freeway exit, he took it, and drove through the center of a depressing downtown hub at reasonable speed. He figured he was in the Northern half of the Midwest, but so many of the regions of America looked the same he knew he was just guessing.  
  
He saw a reasonably upscale hotel in the middle of downtown - probably the classiest joint in this city - and even though he normally would seek out the anonymity of a cheap motel, he figured he deserved a decent bed that didn't remind him of sleeping on a pier.   
  
Bob's cabin up in the Canadian mountains had lots of books on lucid dreaming, and he had read enough to get the gist of it. He tried it once, only to dream about the usual crap. Bob told him he dreamed about what he really wanted, whether he knew it or not; Logan thought that was bullshit. But he figured there really was no one else he'd rather see, and if it was ever going to work, it was going to work now.  
  
He expected some of the shit he got at the front desk, the stares. There were few people in the lobby, which was all polished wood and burnished hues of gold and burgundy, sprays of flowers (lilies predominant) in ornate vases tucked into free corners. It was all fine, but he supposed the fake Impressionist painting behind the front desk (it looked like a mimic of Monet's "Viale Del Giardino", but with more pastels and less talent) was really pushing the class angle into parody.  
  
The front desk guy seemed to eye him like he was the night janitor, and when he pulled out the wad of cash to show he could pay for the room, he looked at him like he robbed a bank. He expected him to tell him they didn't rent rooms by the hour, but somehow he held his tongue.  
  
Logan finally got a mag card to a free room, and went up to the eleventh floor, which he figured was as far away as front desk guy (Anthony, by name tag) could send him. Logan didn't pay much attention to the room, which was standard, nothing special; it smelled a little too heavily of the chemicals the cleaning staff used, and the sheets reeked of industrial detergents, So he closed the blinds, smoothed the comforter out, and stripped down to his shorts, laying down on top of the bed rather than beneath the covers - he would willingly block out as much of the scent as he could. He threw an arm across his nose, trying futilely to keep from getting sick on chemical cleansers, or having it invade his subconscious.  
  
He focused on her as he closed his eyes, and wondered if he could actually make a dream (a memory?) appear by force of will. It really did sound like bullshit, but then again, he used to be an atheist too. (He still was, in spirit - although he supposed it was easier to embrace polytheism as opposed to monotheism, which was apparently the wrong end of the stick. The Higher Realms were absolutely lousy with gods, like cockroaches underneath a fridge in a tenement.)  
  
He didn't know when he fell asleep, but he wouldn't. He did remember the odd sensation of feeling empty yet being far too heavy, like his metal bones were about to send him falling through the floor. For a moment, he would swear he felt himself doing just that, and it wasn't unpleasant.  
  
The next thing he was aware of, he was entering a front room he could only see half of, in some odd dream tunnel vision. No, an incomplete memory; his mind filled in the blanks as best it could, showing a sparsely furnished but strangely tasteful room, where Japanese ink paintings of cranes and ponds shared space with a framed copy (it was a copy, right?) of Savador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory", where the melted clocks in its sunset landscape seemed to mock him somehow.  
  
I chose that, he realized with a shock. He enjoyed the bitter irony - he remembered so little, and the distorted time pieces were representatives of his freakishly long life span. He warped time, even as it warped his memory. Logan was a little surprised to realize he ever felt that way … and before the Organization got a hold of him? Or was it just his subconscious adding it now?  
  
"Logan?" It was a voice so familiar it sent chills up his spine.  
  
And there she was, standing in the entryway leading to the kitchen, the woman he wanted to see before he got his memories erased one more time: Mariko.  
  
For a moment he just stared at her, taking her in. Her oval face, her almond shaped brown eyes as deep and dark as the sea, her long black hair as shiny and sleek as a panther's pelt. He knew she was not immediately drop dead gorgeous, not like Yasha, but there was a delicate beauty to her open face, and something inside of her gave her an inner light that he felt attracted to like a moth to a flame.  
  
"Riko," he said, and his voice cracked down the middle, tears suddenly welling in his eyes and blurring his vision. He felt a stab of pain in his gut, like he'd just been pierced by an icicle, when she came to him and threw her arms around him, embracing him tightly. "Honey, what's wrong?" She asked, as he buried his face in his hair and started to break down into harder, gasping sobs.  
  
He suddenly realized why Leonie's death hit him so hard. It wasn't just that she was cut down right in front of him, and that it was his fault, but it brought back an emotional déjà vu: it reminded him of how he lost Mariko. She was murdered too, and he could do nothing to stop it, and nothing to save her. If he concentrated, he could feel the weight of her in his arms, taste her blood in his mouth, and knew that he not only failed her, but the loss had broken him in some fundamental way; it had made him an animal, because he didn't want to be Human anymore.  
  
Being Human meant you felt things, such as her love, as warm and enveloping as the sun, and the lack of it, a vacuum inside you that just made everything collapse, that made you suffer a pain unimaginable. Sometimes it was better not to feel anything at all. Whoever said it was better to have loved and lost was full of shit.  
  
And he knew he could not allow himself to feel something that deeply again. He couldn't, although gratefully, the Organization seemed to have helped strip him of the ability to do so; it had traumatized him enough, or simply wiped out the emotional equipment. But that was okay, because he was sure no one could love him like she had. It was possibly just romanticizing a past he couldn't remember, but the association he had with her name, with her memory, was of a love unlike one he could ever remember having before (which did not say much, but still). He was never a freak in her eyes, no matter how angry she became, and she was never afraid of him - she accepted him for what he was, and loved him anyways. It was a love he knew he didn't deserve, which made it sweeter, and made its loss that much more devastating.  
  
He did his best to swallow back the tears, even though breathing in the scent of her hair seemed to make something contract in his stomach, and felt her body in his arms, not dead weight but something living and fragile and ephemeral. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, not for the first time.  
  
She slipped out of his grasp, only long enough to look him in the eye. "For what?" There was nothing but curiosity in her expression, and something like empathy in her eyes. It was almost painful for him to see.   
  
"For coming into your life," he said, as that seemed to be the sin that killed her.  
  
She slipped her hands through his hair, and kissed him in that way of hers that felt as if she was trying to draw something out of him, pull the pain from his body, and he wouldn't have put it past her. He knew without knowing how that she was always that way; that his pain was her pain, and she was always trying to bring him solace. Another horrible thing, because what was he but pain? She had deserved better, and she never got it.  
  
He held her so tightly he lifted her off her feet, responding with a kiss of his own, even though he knew he couldn't get anywhere near her amnesia kisses, the ones that made him forget everything but her. But that was another great thing about amnesia- who cared?  
  
It was then he felt a prickly sensation on his skin, something powerful near, approaching, and he knew, when he could feel the scene start freezing around him like it was setting in cement. He knew that feeling, and rage suddenly boiled up inside him as he turned away from Mariko - now freezing up like a buggy computer screen - and faced the intruder.   
  
The back wall - what there had been of it - was gone, as was most of the Dali painting on the side wall. In its place was an overgrown jungle, trees with branches as thick as an elephant's leg twining in infinite combinations, blocking out most of a sky the color of arterial blood. Jean emerged from it all like some amalgam of a phantom and an afterthought. "Logan-" she began, but he didn't let her finish.  
  
"Leave me alone!" He roared, glad at last to have a target for his anger. He stepped in front of Mariko as if protecting her, and he realized, in the back of his mind, that he was still keeping her like a secret - as if he was such a different person with her he wanted no one else to see it. Maybe that was true; all he knew was the Logan Mariko had loved had, in all honesty, died with her. He was just that man's shadow. Maybe that was the real thing he was trying to hide.  
  
Jean seemed to rear back slightly, blinking as if stunned. "What -"  
  
"I want to be left alone!" He exclaimed angrily, just in case she wasn't getting it. "Can't you just leave me be?"  
  
Her red eyes took on a deceptively cold air, in spite of the boiling flames within. "Haven't you made an interesting turn around?" She sniped. "You think I don't know how much you want me?"  
  
"And that's what yer taking advantage of, isn't it?" he snapped, aware he'd regret this but unable to stop himself. The rage was just spewing out of him now, making his face flush with heat. "You know the problem with connecting with a telepath? They can read your mind, but sometimes you can read theirs too. And I know that as soon as you come back you're going back to Scott and ignorin' me, like nothing ever happened. So excuse me if I find that less than arousing."  
  
Her eyes were bright enough that they almost hurt. "With an attitude like that, I wonder why. I've made no decisions-"  
  
"Yes you have. Don't bullshit me."  
  
She scoffed, but rather than dismissive, it had an air of menace to it. "This from a guy fucking a vampire. You do really that could be considered necrophilia, don't you?"  
  
"Considerin' how long you've been with Scott, I guess you should be the expert on that." This had gone way too far, and he knew he didn't even want to be arguing with her. But he needed an outlet for his rage, and he knew he would see Jean again, knew he'd probably remember her. He didn't have that luxury with Mariko.  
  
Jean smiled at him, but it was as sharp as a razor, and didn't really look like her at all. "That's very funny. I'll have to remember that." She then gestured with her hands, and stepped back into her jungle. "Very well, be alone with your dead, Logan. You seem most comfortable with them anyways."  
  
Just like that she was gone, and the destruction she wrought repaired, as if there never had been a portal to another world replacing their back wall. Something was wrong with Jean lately, but it was hard to say what. Maybe it was just having all that power. He knew, from experience, it could take some getting used to.  
  
He turned back to Mariko as the scene started to become unstuck, and took her in his arms, holding her like he was trying to envelop her, become her human shield. Maybe he was, but it had never saved her before, had it?  
  
He would worry about Jean later.  
  
4  
  
Now that he knew Jean had borrowed some of his energy from Logan to put Cammy in the grave, it was a bit easier to track her down. He just had to pick up traces of himself in places he was sure he hadn't been lately.   
  
Bob's search had led him to a couple of dead ends, but finally he'd found a pocket universe still in existence … and it was familiar too. It was her mental safe place, the one he had seen in Jean's mind when she retreated there after the psychic shock of overextending herself during the fight with the Legion demons. This was where he saw she made Logan her shirtless, barefoot gardener, perhaps the groundskeeper to her Lady Chatterly. But there had been many changes to the place since he saw it last, and most were troubling.  
  
First of all, the garden wasn't so much a garden anymore, but some strange combination of a jungle and an overgrown, neglected meadow. The brand new Alkali Lake was here too, looking like a gray mirror tucked between sawtoothed mountains and hedges gone to seed. Was Jean even here? She was ever-present, and yet absent as well, a curiosity in many pocket universes.   
  
"They're both totally void of hate, but killing me just the same," Bob sang, as he viewed the jungle that was starting to slowly encroach on the remains of the garden. That was the most troubling the thing; the jungle appeared like some nightmarish vision born of M.C. Escher's and Maurice Sendak's fevered imagination. Trees that never existed twisted with vines plump and pulsing with alien blood, and he got a sense that Logan had been here sometime recently. Should he have been surprised? "I am to connected to you to slip away," he continued under his breath, parting vines warm as skin and slick as silk, looking to see if there was any sign of the mansion beneath this ravenous horde of trees. "Days away, I still feel you touching me, changing me. And considerately killing me."  
  
Vines wrapped around his ankles like tentacles, and ahead of him, dozens of them suddenly raised up and wove themselves together, building an impenetrable wall, thorns as thick as baby's arm growing from their black and green flesh like Logan's claws. Whatever was in there, Jean (?) didn't want him to see it. That made him deeply suspicious, and he knew there was no fucking way that was the mansion. So what was it?  
  
"I was wondering when you'd show up," Jean said behind him.  
  
He turned casually, digging his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He sensed her as Cammy - that wasn't good. "You could have dropped by and said hello."  
  
She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes were full of flame, and her red hair was brighter and longer, like a halo of lava. "I thought Logan could say hello for me."'  
  
She really had her guard up, or she was having problems controlling her new power, as he picked up nothing from her but power. The jungle would indicate a loss of control, but whether that was simply of power or of sanity was yet to be seen. "You know, it probably isn't fair of you to use Logan like this, although I realize you saved him from some Cammy brainwashing, and good on ya for that."  
  
"Use him?" She repeated, and scoffed. "That's rich coming from you. Does he even realize how much you use him?"  
  
He raised an eyebrow at that. "'Scuse me, hon?"  
  
"I know everything now," she proclaimed, and he could see her aura take on a reddish orange glow, like she was spontaneously combusting. But it was psychic fire, a lot more deadly than the real thing. "You need him more than he needs you. It must be hard to be a god too undisciplined for the others, and too powerful for the Human pests."  
  
He could feel the power building as the translucent flames swathed her entirely, and he realized, with a small shock of horror, she was displaying the anthropomorphic power signature of Camaxtli. Oh shit. "Jeannie darlin', listen to me," he said quickly. She was still Human, and he didn't want to have to hurt her. "You have to reassert control now. I know you're still in there - "  
  
"Still in there?" She said, through her veil of flames, and laughed as the convection waves made her hair move like Medusa's snakes when enraged. "I've never felt better. Unlike you."  
  
And it was then that he felt something like a flaming sword pierce his brain, and he realized that he had underestimated her control of the powers.   
  
And how much of Jean was still in there. 


	3. Part 3

5  
  
  
  
Angel found him with his head down on the desk, arms over his head like he was trying to avoid some devastating blows. "Wes?" He asked, wondering if he decided to have a late afternoon nap, or if someone had attacked him.  
  
But Angel heard a muffled, "He's gone." He then raised his head, and looked at him with eyes more irritated than tired. "I called that school back in New York, and apparently there was an incident of some sort this morning - Logan's missing."  
  
Angel wasn't sure how to take that. "He's been kidnapped?"  
  
Wesley shook his head, running his hands through his short black hair and messing it up even further. "No, he's done a runner, again. Is Yasha with you?"  
  
"No, she's still in the archives, searching through files. Did you know she reads Kestlan?" It was an obscure written only demon language - even Wesley only knew a few verbs.  
  
"I'm not surprised. She had access to the files of the Templars before she burned them all, didn't she?" He only sounded slightly bitter.  
  
Angel closed the door to Wesley's office, and asked, "Anything on her?"  
  
The Englishman stretched in his chair, joining his hands together and holding them up over his head, arching his spine as he tried to work the kinks out. "Nothing new. She seemed to drop off the face of the world shortly after killing that Slayer in Nepal."  
  
"Presumably where and when she was cursed."  
  
"Presumably." He let his arms fall back to the desk, without even ruffling a single file. "She remained something of an urban legend in the demon world - the "Dragon Lady" - and was rumored to be living in almost all of Asia, Japan, and Canada since then."  
  
"Dragon Lady? Isn't that stereotypical?"  
  
"Um, no. She has a large dragon tattoo along her spine. She seems to have acquired a couple of others over the decades."  
  
"Oh." Angel only hesitated a moment before throwing himself down in the chair before the desk. A shaft of sunlight from the open blinds behind Wes bisected the chair, but Angel reminded himself all of Wolfram and Hart was covered with mystically treated glass, so their undead employees didn't burst into inconvenient flames. It was strangely thoughtful of them. "First a curse, now a telltale tattoo. She's stealing all my best bits."  
  
"At least she doesn't have a soul."  
  
He shrugged. At least there was that. "So what was the curse exactly? She's been less than illuminating."  
  
Wes rubbed the back of his neck as he started shuffling the small piles of folders making a temporary restraining wall around his desk. "Most of the records of the Watchers were destroyed along with them, but there was some information at the Australian branch office. Buddhists are much like Wiccans, in the sense that they believe that whatever they send out will come back on them-"  
  
"Instant karma. Yeah, I know that much."  
  
"Then you know that desire is, to their belief systems, the path to suffering? So that was her curse. Of course, the group that cursed her at least felt they were damning themselves to the very same thing, but obviously felt it was worth it."  
  
Angel hated to admit it, but after shifting uncomfortably, he was forced to say, "I don't get it. They cursed her with desire?"  
  
"I know, it's hard to wrap your head around, isn't it? But if you think of it as damning someone with constantly unrequited love, you can appreciate the true evil genius of it. She constantly wants, but it's a nebulous desire that can't be sated; it surely leeches the joy out of everything."  
  
"So you're saying she's depressed? A chronic depressive vampire?"  
  
Wesley considered that a moment. "That could be one way to look at it, yes. She can never be truly happy."  
  
Angel was still at a loss - that stopped her from being evil how? But then again, he was depressed for a long time too, and he could barely be bothered to hunt down a rat. Maybe it was amazing she was up and about in society in any form. "And how does this keep her from being an evil predator?"  
  
It was Wesley's turn to shrug. "I don't think it does. But she can no longer take joy in slaughter."  
  
"Ah." Again, he was at a loss to see how that helped matters. So she wasn't sadistic … she killed without feeling anything at all? That was an improvement how? But rather than focus on that, he decided to move on to the more relevant topic. "Are you sure your interpretation of the prophesy is correct? How long did you see it - a few seconds?"  
  
Wesley gave him a rather harsh stare, like he couldn't believe he was being this boneheaded. "The implications are dire, Angel. I think Bob intends to use Logan as his proxy in some apocalyptic battle."  
  
"You're assuming it's against his will. You know how Logan loves to fight."  
  
"Yes, but you know as well as I do that endowing a Human with god like powers, even temporarily, never ends up well. Even with someone as resilient as Logan."  
  
"But even if we tell him, what can he do about it? You're assuming Logan will care."  
  
That made Wes sigh wearily, shoulders sagging like he had just had a ten ton pack strapped to his back. "I know. But he ought to."  
  
There was nothing he could say to that, so he remained silent. Behind Wesley, the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles gleamed gold in the dying light, a strange garden of gilded rockets awaiting launch. Wow - did someone slip something in his blood this morning? Or was proximity to the frustrating, enigmatic Lady Blood driving him nuts?   
  
He really didn't like her, but the truth was he didn't know why. Maybe it was her coolly superior air, or the fact that she was so miserly with any kind of facts about herself, like telling anyone would make her explode into dust. She wouldn't talk much about her relationship with Logan either, and he knew there was something untoward going on there.  
  
(And, you know, she was really very pretty …)  
  
"Find anything further on him in the files?" Angel said, mostly to derail his own train of thought. He was getting as bad as Spike now. (Although he stopped crassly hitting on her after Yasha brought him to his knees with a savage wrist lock, and told him she'd rip his arm off at the joint and beat him to death with it if he didn't cease and desist. But behind her back, Spike still insisted she wanted him. Angel had no idea if Yasha had taken any enjoyment in humiliating Spike, but Angel knew that it made him happy.)  
  
Wesley sighed again, more heavily this time, and he pulled a sheaf of files off the right hand pile and shoved them towards him. "So far no. Oddly enough, I've found files on the mutant phenomenon going back to the early thirties, long before it was even secret conjecture in the scientific community."  
  
"So they had some inside knowledge?" He took the top folder and started flipping through it, finding lots of yellowing documents printed in French.  
  
"It would seem, but I'm not sure how. And many of these files have no obvious connection to mutants or mutations of any sort, which is even more puzzling."  
  
"But you haven't found any specific references to Logan?"  
  
"Not so far, no."  
  
Angel scanned a few more documents, and noted the connection. "These are documents from World War Two?"  
  
Wes nodded, flipping through another file of his own. "For some reason these were grouped in with the mutant files. It seems to be about a top secret mission codenamed Operation: Nightfall."  
  
"They had such cool code names back then."  
  
"Well, it was a reference to the night jumping necessary to drop the agents behind enemy lines. It was a secret - and unprecedented - collaboration between English, Canadian, and Russian intelligence agencies -and eventually American - to get special agents into hostile territory, mostly France and Poland, and share information reported by their various operatives. As you can imagine, no intelligence agency has ever been that cooperative with a rival ever since."  
  
Angel flipped back and read the documents more carefully. He hated to admit it, especially since that period of time homeless and hiding out in New York, feeling sorry for himself, but he'd become a World War Two buff. He blamed the History Channel, which should have been more appropriately named the Luftwaffe Channel. "Was it successful?"  
  
"Very much so. But the mortality rate was incredible - most of the operatives were dead by the end of the war, and seven of them went missing, presumed dead, but no bodies were ever found. But then again, they never could identify everyone buried in a mass grave; they just didn't have the technology back them."  
  
Angel grimaced sympathetically, and continued scanning the pages, skipping the Russian ones - he never did learn how to read that. He turned to some pages in English, but they seemed to be cryptically composed memos that imparted little in substantive information. The one at the end of the file had a small black and white photo paper clipped to it, and written on the bottom white edge of the photo in ink faded to ash gray was the words "The End!" Considering the beaming, drunken smiles on the servicemen's faces, and the wine glasses in their hands, it referred to the end of the war.  
  
But they weren't really soldiers, were they? These were the spies, the moles who made it through months (? Longer?) in enemy territory, gathering intelligence that would get them tortured and killed if they were even suspected of being spies, not just discovered. The Nazis were hardly known for their tolerance. Most of them looked oddly young, although most had a hardness in their eyes that suggested not only were they older than they looked, but had seen and done things they would have gladly taken back if they could. Angel wondered idly if any of these men were still alive.  
  
One sitting at the far left side of the photo, hoisting a pint mug, was proudly wearing a RAF jacket with a British flag patch on the sleeve, probably the first time he could proudly display his nationality since he was dropped in. There was an American there too, judging from the small flag tucked in his pocket, and two Russians who had their arms locked together like they were having a friendly arm wrestle. A couple of the men standing in the back had no obvious signs of nationality, and there was one man turning away from the camera, his face only partially visible in profile, the patch on the sleeve of his jacket slightly blurred. Maybe he gained Angel's attention because he didn't seem to be celebrating; everything in his posture seemed to say he'd seen too much horror to celebrate anything ever again.  
  
"Oh my god," Angel exclaimed. "I know why this is in the file."  
  
Wesley looked up at him, brows bunching in curiosity. "Why?"  
  
Angel pulled the paper clip off the file, and it instantly crumbled to dust between his fingers, showing how old it was. He handled the photograph gingerly, in case it wished to dissolve as well. "Look closely at the figure on the far right, the man in profile, wearing a Canadian Special Forces jacket."  
  
Wesley took the photo very carefully, and studied it for a moment, until he saw what Angel had seen. "Oh Jesus," he gasped. "Is that Logan?"  
  
"It looks like it." And the most frightening thing was he hadn't aged a bit. Only his hair was different, his jaw a little more clean shaven, but that was it. "Hey, there's writing on the back."  
  
Wes flipped it over, to read the ink scrawl, reduced to a gray outline, but still legible (barely). "Limey?" he repeated, with a frown of distaste. "Bear?" After consulting the front and back, he said, "Oh -someone listed them by their nicknames. Still, don't you think, with so many Brits, Limey was confusing?"  
  
"Bound to be," Angel agreed. "Is Wolverine on the nickname list?"  
  
"Oddly enough, no. According to this, if I'm reading the order correctly …" He carefully flipped back and forth between both sides before saying, "According to this, he was called Lingo."  
  
"Lingo? Why the hell would they call him that?"  
  
Wes stared at him a moment, equally puzzled, and then Angel saw it: that look Wesley got when all the pieces suddenly clicked into place, when he suddenly realized something both obvious, astoundingly difficult, and brilliant. "Because he spoke the lingo. All of it."  
  
Angel got it himself. He couldn't help but think of Logan's most obvious mutation - claws - first. "His fluency with language. Do you think he was trained for it? Or could he just do it - secondary mutation, perhaps?"  
  
Wes shrugged a single shoulder. "Chicken or egg. During the war, they were certainly recruiting interpreters - how quickly could they drill someone on a foreign language, nonetheless several? Being Canadian, it's not difficult to imagine he was already fluent in French, which probably gave him an edge."  
  
"But how many languages does he currently speak?"  
  
Wesley set the picture down carefully, then held open his hands in a kind of shrug. "If he was fluent in the main European tongues back then - French, German, Italian, Spanish, even Polish and Russian - he would be an invaluable intelligence asset. There would be nothing anyone could say around him, in any language, that he wouldn't understand."  
  
Angel simply nodded, not only seeing the wisdom in that, but feeling a little dumbfounded. Here he'd just been wondering if any of those guys were still alive, and it turned out he actually knew one - but one who didn't know he knew, if that made sense. "And then there's the small fact that he seems immune to death. How perfect is that in a mole?"  
  
"But this was before mutations were known; I'm sure they had no clue on that front. Perhaps Logan didn't either."  
  
"Until he was shot and not killed."  
  
"Quite possible. Or maybe he just attributed his lack of injury and illness to simply being lucky. That's not unheard of."   
  
Angel looked down at the yellowing photo once more, now upside down from his perspective, and saw as if for the first time how weary Logan looked in that photograph. He'd probably just wanted to get the hell home. (Where was home?) "But, hey, if we ever find Logan, we have something for him. A photo, and the knowledge he was fighting for the good guys in in the war."  
  
"What do we have?" Wes replied. "Think about it - he might not take this well."  
  
"Why not?"   
  
"Let's be generous, and assume he's was in his mid-twenties when this picture was taken. Do you realize how old he'd be now?"  
  
Okay, math wasn't his strongest subject, but it didn't take him long to figure out where Wes was going with this. "Shit. He'd be in his eighties." With an ironic tip of his head, he added, "He wears it well."  
  
"And we're giving his age the benefit of the doubt. He could be much older than that. He could be as old as you."  
  
"No." It wasn't that Angel didn't believe him, it was just that he couldn't believe Logan could be that old. Sure, vampires didn't age, but they were dead - hard to age when you were dead; that kind of left you out of the time bubble. You only commenced rotting and decaying if there wasn't something demonic dwelling in your skin.   
  
"But at least we have somewhere to start," Wes sighed, sitting back in his chair. "Logan was in the Canadian Special Forces in the '40's. Now all we have to do is comb their records until we find him."  
  
"Oh yeah. The military is bound to throw open their records on a secret mission to an American law firm." Angel said, frowning at the thought. Shit.  
  
Wesley groaned, and laid his head back on his desk again, careful to avoid the picture, not bothering to hide his dejection.  
  
Well, now they were going to see how far throwing around the weight of an evil empire would get them.  
  
****  
  
The instant he felt the dissonance, one hundred eyes converged on the scene.  
  
The thing about having pieces of your consciousness in a billion other things was you always had someone near the epicenter of whatever occurred, when and where ever it happened. Since he assumed it could be trouble, he sent the copperheads, the corals, and the cobras.  
  
Degei was perfectly fine being alone with his babies. He knew that many people feared snakes, for reasons he couldn't fathom: snakes were terrific. Snakes were him, his people and his offspring, and they were him as well. It wasn't a relationship he expected the bodied to truly understand.  
  
Through dozen of his (his babies) eyes, he saw the visitor was Bob, which was no surprise - Bob was the only one who visited him regularly, and was in fact the only New World god whom he considered a friend. Most of the rest of them were insufferable, which made them different from the Old World gods, in that the Old Worlders were generally intolerable.   
  
Even though he was actually in his cottage, making himself some tea, he saw, in his mind's eye, that Bob didn't look well. He was much bluer than normal, hair a lambent gold, and he had 'ported in grabbing his head, as if in pain. Bob gazed down at his snake consciousnesses, eyes bleeding blue energy. "Ah hell, Deg, I fucked up," he said, anguished. "I don't wanna have to kill another Human. Shit. Mind if I crash here for a bit?" Without waiting for a response, Bob keeled over, only to be caught by a supportive cushion of snakes.  
  
What the hell was that about? Kill another Human? He wasn't implying that a Human attacked him, was he? Since when could a Human hurt a god?  
  
Degei cast his consciousness outward, making sure that his babies grabbed Bob and brought him back here, as he began straightening a spot for Bob to recover in. So much weird stuff had been happening lately - what the fuck was going on now?  
  
This is exactly why he preferred snakes.  
  
6  
  
There was a unexpected knock on the door just as the Aliens DVD got to the good part, where that smarmy Paul Reiser was about to be killed. Shit.  
  
Marc paused the movie, and used a special function on his remote to call up picture in picture. But it didn't show him another television channel - it showed him the view through the small security camera he had hidden in the hall, pointed at his door. Peepholes were for chumps.  
  
Standing at his door was a cappuccino hued Barbie doll, dressed in a flouncy blue poet's shirt and tight brown pants, with stack heel boots that probably gave her an extra four inches of height, her long hair inexplicably as white as vanilla icing. Ah, of course, Xavier was sending out his people; he should have anticipated that.  
  
He supposed Storm was attractive to many, but not to him, just like he kind of missed the boat on Jean, no matter Logan's feeling towards her. Marc liked women who looked like they could not only keep up with him, but could potentially outpace him. Storm was way too delicate looking, and Jean far too patrician, in spite of the red hair. But Helga - he could go for her, in spite of the fact that she was as green as last year's tuna salad. You had to love a woman who not only had her own flamethrower, but could use it like a Marine on holiday. There was a woman who had his heart, and a few other organs as well. He really had to remember to ask her to marry him next time he saw her.  
  
Marcus put his goggles on, and pulled his Glock out, placing it just under his left thigh for easy, quick reach, hand on the couch beside his leg. He kept his posture slouched back and casual, feet up on the coffee table, as he grabbed the smaller remote that operated the new electronic lock on his door. He only used it when he was home, because it was too easily manipulated from the outside, if you knew how to read and interpret infrared frequencies. (The fact that he was the only person he knew that could do that was not a point in its favor.)  
  
He pressed the button that unlocked it, and tossed the smaller remote aside, as he got rid of the security camera picture on screen. "Come on in if you want, babe, but he ain't here."  
  
Storm did open the door and step inside, giving him a curious look. "How did you know who it was?"  
  
He shrugged, and tapped his goggles. "Everyone has a specific infrared frequency."  
  
She considered that a moment, and then looked back at the door as she closed it. "You can see through a door?"  
  
"That one, yeah."  
  
She scowled at him like she knew he was lying, but couldn't prove it. And she must have been uncomfortable with him, because she stayed by the door, arms crossed over her chest. "Where has Logan gone?"  
  
He shrugged again. "Fuck if I know. Even under ideal circumstances he's hardly gregarious."  
  
She cocked her head and gave him her best "fuck you" stare, and it was difficult for him not to laugh. He expected better from a sister. "We just want to help him."  
  
"If he wanted your help, he'd have gone to you in the first place."  
  
"He's in shock."  
  
"Yeah, he is. What the fuck happened? He didn't tell me anything about it. How old was the girl? Who was her mother? Where the fuck were you guys when they were getting shot?"  
  
Her frosty blue eyes narrowed, as if she didn't like the implication of failure in his tone. "She was seventeen; her mother was apparently the mutant nicknamed Static. According to the Professor, Leonie was the result of some sort of gene combination program. And the shooting occurred at Abbot's Park - Logan and Leonie were alone there. By the time we found out, it was all over."  
  
"Convenient." Logan had been shaken by Static's death too, wasn't he? Damn, a double whammy. No wonder he was so broken up.  
  
Her frown deepened into a scowl. "Where is he, Marcus?"  
  
"How would I know? He cleaned up and took off. Do you really think I can keep Logan from going when he doesn't wanna stay?"  
  
"You're lying."  
  
"Am I? You guys have done a boffo job of makin' him stay yourself. And maybe I oughta warn you of something, Storm. Maybe you don't believe me about infrared signatures, but I have learned something interesting: before mutants use their powers, their body temperature spikes, especially in the vicinity of the brain. So even when a mutant thinks about using their powers against me, I can see it, and act accordingly to prevent it. And I can; I have extraordinary reflexes, and I'm always armed. If you'd like to put that to the test, I'm willin', but I don't think you'd like it. Still, I'd just wound ya, 'cause yer a friend of Logan's. Wanna try me, sweetheart?" Seeing through the door had been a lie, but this wasn't. He could see a mutant powering up, even if it was just a split second before the act, and he could shoot first - he knew that from experience. He slipped his hand beneath his thigh, and wrapped his fingers around the butt and trigger guard. It wouldn't take him any time at all to put a bullet through her shoulder or lower leg.  
  
For a moment, the static electricity around her remained pretty high, but then started dying down, as she decided he was being honest. "You're despicable; the type of mutant who gives other mutants bad names."  
  
"This from the woman who was thinkin' about zappin' me 'cause she thinks I'm lying."  
  
"I know you're lying. And I wasn't going to zap you." She then decided to try the guilt tack, perhaps to distract from her poor lie. "If he's your friend, you wouldn't send him out into certain danger."  
  
"I didn't send him out into certain danger. He wanted to leave, and I didn't stop him. He had calmed down, and he promised to give me a call. I don't think he's in any immediate risk. Those fucks are playin' with him, and you know it."  
  
"We don't know any such thing, and neither do you. All we know is that they torture and kill mutants for sport, and they have fixated on Logan as their favorite punching bag. Where is he?"  
  
"I told you, sweetie, I don't know. But as soon as he calls, I'll let you know." He knew Logan would never forgive him if Xavier's lame ass crew broke in on his action. But if they wanted to come with him on his raiding party in two and a half days (take a few hours), they could, as long as they didn't get in his way. Still, he wasn't telling them anything until it was high noon time. He didn't trust them not to jump the gun.  
  
She huffed a sigh through her nose. "This is pointless."  
  
"I agree."  
  
She spun back towards the door, hair flaring dramatically behind her. "This could have been easy, but fine, you've made your choice."  
  
"Oh, honey," he chuckled. "You really don't want to threaten me."  
  
She paused half way out the door, and shot him her most withering glare, which still just wasn't cutting it. "You haven't heard the last from us."  
  
"I'm sure I haven't. Sayonara, muchacha." He gave her a mock friendly wave, hoping she'd take the hint and get her bony ass out of his loft.  
  
She simply slammed the door as she stormed (Ha!) dramatically off. No wonder Logan didn't like to spend too much time with them - bunch of pompous, self-righteous sorts, weren't they? And no good at issuing genuinely effective threats.   
  
He grabbed the small remote and reinitiated the door lock, then turned the DVD back on, pulling the gun from beneath his thigh and placing it beside him on the couch, still in reach on the off chance he needed it. But he didn't think he would, at least not for the time being.  
  
Marcus wondered what Xavier's next move would be, but as he watched Reiser finally bite it (why didn't they show that graphically on screen? The audience would have cheered), and the film started to move on towards Vasquez's inevitable death scene - a true tragedy, because, movie character or not, there was another woman he would've married in a heartbeat, and she wasn't even green - he found it hard to concentrate on all the gory alien action, not just the Xavier question. Honestly, he didn't care what he and his "X-Men" did next; it didn't matter one way or another.   
  
He couldn't help but wonder if Logan had reached target point yet, and what - if anything - he was doing. What was the plan he wouldn't tell him about? He still had a really bad feeling about that. Couldn't he have at least humored him and taken a gun, even if he never intended to use it?  
  
If something really did happen to Logan, Marcus wasn't sure he'd be able to forgive himself. 


	4. Part 4

7  
  
It looked like an abandoned Army base.  
  
Set a few miles north of New Mexico's White Sands Proving grounds, it was ringed by a chain link fence that had seen better decades, topped with rusty barbed wire that wavered in the wind like fishing line. Signs warning of radiation and toxic contamination joined the usual signs about hideous things happening to trespassers. Some of the signs, though metal, had bullet holes in them.   
  
But Logan could smell that there had been much activity around here recently, despite all signs of abandonment: the scent of many Humans (mostly male, and with a penchant for cheap aftershave) mingled with fresh exhaust, and the smell of helicopter fuel. Bustling desolation?  
  
The desert's sunset sky was a fiery orange, painting the blond desert with its bright colors, and you could be forgiven for thinking it was almost as pretty as a postcard, or a glimpse into hell itself. Somehow, it was pretty and ugly all at once.  
  
He saw no guards, no people on duty, though he smelled the ozone of sensors and security devices, the oil of forgotten guns. He wondered how fast they would react.   
  
Logan popped his claws and cut through the titanium lock and standard chains holding the front gate together, and kicked them open to step inside. It looked like the former base - a cracker box of dusty khaki - was miles away, but it was an optical illusion. The ground was so flat here, featureless, that a few hundred feet could be mistaken in the heat shimmers for a mile.  
  
He retracted his claws and simply walked; he could sense himself breaking the infrared trips, smell the variation in their energy output, feel the blind eyes of cameras as they scanned him, compared him to the computer database, made him.  
  
He could feel the blunt thuds of rotors cutting the thick desert air, and wasn't surprised when a sleek black helicopter, bracketed on either side of its bulbous nose by weapon ports, rose up into the sky from behind the base. It stayed low, not even gaining sixty feet, and scudded right towards him, weapons locked and loaded. "Stand down, Wolverine," a voice boomed from a loudspeaker inside the chopper. "On your knees, hands behind your back. We'll cut you to fucking ribbons if we have to." Backwash from the rotors kicked up dust devils that tasted like sandpaper.  
  
Now jeeps were streaming from the dead base, full of men sweating in bulky body armor, wielding guns and other similar weapons almost as big as their legs. He couldn't help but snicker. "I freak you all out that much, huh?"  
  
"You have three seconds to comply," the voice boomed.  
  
He knew he might regret it, but he gave the guys in the chopper the middle finger salute as the troops from the first jeep jumped out and surrounded him, weapons aimed and ready to go. "Fuck you - I'm givin' myself up, ya fuckin' morons."  
  
"What?" One of the body armored soldiers said, surprised.  
  
Logan was surprised too, because the voice sounded female, and by scent, yeah, definitely a woman. Maybe it was a psych tactic; they knew he'd be more reluctant to attack a woman, even one with a big ass gun. Still, he fixed her with a hard stare, her hazel eyes all he could see of her face. "That's right - why the fuck else would I walk through the front door? I'm surrendering. You want me so bad? Have me."  
  
"It's a trick," one of the men murmured. Static burst from radios as people instantly debated this.  
  
"Area's clear," one voice replied. Obviously they had been scanning for his "friends", in case it was a trap. But he was simply bait - the trap hadn't sprung yet. He did wonder, idly, what Bob would do to these people.  
  
"Let's just get this over with," he said, then added, with a self-conscious smirk. "Take me to your leader."  
  
It wasn't everyone that got a thirty person commando team escort, complete with helicopter gunship. He should feel honored.  
  
Strangely enough, though, he didn't. For the first time in a while, he was genuinely frightened. He did know what the fuck he was doing, right?  
  
God, he hoped so.  
  
***  
  
His sullen escorts led him into the abandoned base, and from there - what a shock - into the true base underneath it.  
  
There was a hidden access door that led them down into a bright metal corridor, and from there into a slightly more dingy metallic base. It could have been the base that had once been up top, only moved half a mile underground. At least it was cooler here.  
  
He was actually frisked, which he found hilarious ("I think I have some knives in my hands," he offered, which earned him a round of dirty looks. It made him laugh), then scanned for tracking and communication devices, and they insisted on putting his wrists in some weird kind of handcuffs, not trusting that standard cuffs would do. They were titanium laced with adamantium (not much), and rather than be held together by a flimsy chain, they were connected by a short, thick, rigid bar. They also held his hands into his back, so if he popped his claws, he'd spear himself in the kidneys. Not life threatening for him, but definitely painful; he'd probably need a little down time to recover.  
  
"Is this any way to treat a guest?" He asked, as soon as they were done. Of course his only answer was to have two of the burliest soldiers each grab him by a secured arm and hustle him along to a small room just off a secondary corridor, where the lights were so dim Logan wondered if the bulbs had blown out.   
  
They bustled him into a room that looked like an Ops center of some sort: one wall had a dozen small monitors, showing security camera footage inside and outside of the base, while another wall had a huge lighted map, where the Western Hemisphere was shown broken up into a grid formation. Logan found himself staring at that, because he was trying very hard to make sense of it. Didn't that seem ... familiar somehow?  
  
There was no desk, but a lighted table currently showing nothing. Still, the way the shadows of countries were painted on it, it could have been a high tech Risk game board. The rest of the room was swathed in shadows, and smelled heavily of rust and ozone. Because of the lowering darkness, he felt like he was in the world's most spacious submarine.   
  
The guards left, but he knew he was not alone. He could smell the man, even if he was hiding in the shadows. "So, are ya gonna talk to me, or do I get the silent treatment 'cause I've been a bad boy?"  
  
He could actually see the man, in spite of the overwhelming, induced night. He was tall and broad shouldered, starting to get thick around the middle, but nowhere near as hefty as Stryker had been. Something about his ramrod straight posture suggested he was still in fighting trim, and could, if necessary, drop into the trenches with the grunts. "What's the play here, Wolverine?" He asked, with a smoky voice that could have made him a "smooth jazz" radio deejay. The pale yellow lights from the grid picked up silver in his otherwise dark hair.  
  
"Titus Andronicus," he snapped. "Who the fuck are you?"  
  
The man turned to face him, chuckling mildly. "Well, not Titus - he was the man done hard by, yes? That can't be me. Now tell me what your game is here."  
  
"Who the fuck are you?" Logan reiterated, growling this time. "You stink of head cheese to me."  
  
He took a single step forward, farther into a shaft of light. He had a face that might be considered rugged, with a heavy square jaw, and lines gathering beneath eyes as pale as rainwater. He smelled like arrogance and insect repellant. "You always did have a way with words. If it makes you feel any better, my code name is Home Front."  
  
"That's not your name."  
  
"It would be a silly one if it was." He sighed, like a put upon father dealing with a recalcitrant child. "You can call me Dorn, if you wish. So what will it be? Are your friends going to be crashing in here any moment?"  
  
"I don't have any friends."  
  
"Now, come on, we both know that's not true. There's Xavier's little mutant school, and the Australian miracle worker. Is he a mutant? There has been some conjecture he's far too powerful to be simply another of your kind. After all, he made Reaper a normal Human, and how on earth can anyone alter genetic structure just like that?"  
  
Logan glared at him, trying to punch through his skull with his eyes alone, and ignored his question. "I certainly don't have a daughter anymore."  
  
"Well, to your knowledge," he replied glibly. "That was a tragedy, but Leonie was a deeply flawed experiment. It never should have happened."  
  
"Why did you murder her?" He refused to take the bait of his "That you know of" comment; he wouldn't tell him the truth anyways.  
  
Dorn cocked his head curiously, something approaching a smile entering his voice. "I just told you. And murder is rather a strong word -"  
  
"What do you want from me?" He snarled. His heart was thundering in his chest, and he knew it was a combination of anger and fear ganging up on him, dumping adrenaline into his system by the ton and making him shake. He only let the rage bleed through, mainly because he couldn't hold it back; he wouldn't let this smug bastard see any fear. He'd die first.   
  
"From you? Nothing at all. Except knowledge of your plan. We have telepaths here, you know, and I think you'd find the experience unpleasant. Especially since they know your little trick."  
  
"Plan? Get it through your thick fucking skull, Dorn - there is no plan. You blew Leonie's fucking head off all over me, and left me a note threatening everyone else I know. What did you think I would fucking do?"  
  
"Go to ground, or try and bring the battle to us. We were really hoping for the latter."  
  
He was going to kill this man. He was going to rip open his gut and let him die slow, Dorn's intestines spilling out on the floor as he watched. Bob had better not try and stop him. "Why? So you can capture or kill my friends?"  
  
Dorn grinned. "Now you have friends."  
  
He was going to kick his fucking teeth in and make him choke on them. Logan could feel his rage giving him power, and he suddenly wondered if he could break the cuffs. "I'm sick of you - I'm sick of all you psychotic fucks haunting my life. Just get it the fuck over with, whatever it is you shits are so hot to do to me."  
  
"And we're supposed to believe this change of heart?" There wasn't a single whiff of fear coming from Dorn - he controlled this scenario, he controlled this base, and he knew it. "We're supposed to believe you'll just waltz in our door and comply?"  
  
"I don't give a fuck what you believe. Just know that if you leave me alive, I will hunt down and kill every single fucking one of you."  
  
Dorn let out a bark of sharp laughter. "There's the Wolverine we all know and love. Spitting in the face of his betters even as he falls. Even people who loathed you - like Stryker - had to admire that about you. You could be dragged out of the room by your ankles, not even resembling a Human being anymore, and you'd still be slurring curses at everyone. If stubbornness was a sport, you'd be a world champion."  
  
"I'm not joking."  
  
"Good lord, man, I know that. You've never issued an idle threat in your life." He paused only briefly. "Are you wondering why I'm not quaking in my boots?"  
  
"There are weapons trained on me," Logan said, only to inform him he knew. Mechanically operated, probably up with the security cameras. Just because he couldn't see them didn't mean he couldn't smell them or feel them. "Do you really think they'll help you?"  
  
"No, but the telepath observing from the listening post could grab your mind before you took a single step, so try not to be cocky."  
  
He wanted to kill him; he wanted to rip his throat out, and kick his skull in until it was a mushy paste. He didn't know this man - he was roughly certain of that - but he loathed him with every fiber of his being. "Who am I?" He asked, unable to keep from snarling. But for the record, he had tried.  
  
Home Front - Dorn - smiled coldly, his eyes glittering with malevolence. "You are Wolverine; you are Weapon X. You were the greatest assassin we ever had. And we'd really like to renew that partnership."  
  
His heart was pounding so hard he thought it might bust his ribcage, and he could barely hear the man through the thundering of his own blood.   
  
He was still shaking, but he didn't know if it was only due to rage anymore. He knew this - he knew what the man was saying, even though he didn't want to believe it - and yet he didn't want to hear this. He already had all the facts, but he didn't want confirmation that he had never been anything but a cold blooded killer. "Eat me, you stupid fuck."  
  
Dorn shook his head sadly, a disappointed father. "We don't have to be enemies, Logan. In fact, I think we can work together equitably." He raised his hand, and as soon as Logan saw he had something hidden within his palm, it shot something at him. It was a dart that embedded itself in his throat. He could feel himself almost instantaneously floating away, the drugs hitting him hard and fast.  
  
As soon as he dropped to his knees, Dorn added, "We'll discuss it later, but not here, not now. Sleep well - it may be the last chance you get."  
  
He collapsed face first to the hard cement floor, and wondered what the fuck that was supposed to mean.  
  
He just hoped Bob hurried his ass up, and fucked with these guys so badly they never knew which way was up ever again.  
  
8  
  
As soon as he got off the radio with Storm, Xavier wondered if he just shouldn't have gone and had a talk with Marcus himself.  
  
It had been clear no one liked him, and no one wanted to do it. Piotr balked, mainly because he was afraid of him, and how bad did you have to be to frighten a man who could turn to steel? Storm hadn't wanted to go either - she seriously disliked him - but she went because someone had to. He had asked her to set aside her feelings and approach him amicably, but Xavier had the sinking feeling she hadn't managed to do that. He could understand why she didn't like him: mercenary had to be the lowest of low among occupations, just a step removed from assassin.  
  
She was quite hostile towards Marcus, and felt he was lying about his knowledge of Logan's whereabouts, which was undoubtedly true. But he didn't believe that Marcus would ever endanger Logan deliberately; Logan was one of the few friends he had. Not that Marcus was unlikable (although that could be an issue), it was simply that he didn't trust most people. Ironic, considering Logan didn't trust many either, and yet they both implicitly trusted each other. Paranoia as proof of trust?  
  
He knew what he was going to have to do, and he didn't like it. But he knew Logan would go to Marcus for only one of two reasons: to get weapons, or get a target. He wouldn't like it, but he would have to do it, for Logan's sake.  
  
Xavier was still psyching himself up when he felt an odd - and yet familiar - presence. Now who could that be now?  
  
There was a knock at the door, and he said, somewhat distractedly, "Yes Brendan, what is it?"  
  
Brendan opened the door and peeked inside curiously. Maybe it was his half demon nature, but he had recovered quickly from his bullet wound - he was hardly even limping anymore. "Um, there's a guy here who really wants to see you. He said you'd know him as Spider?"  
  
Xavier sat back in his chair, marveling at the timing. Surely it was coincidence. "Yes, of course. Send him in."  
  
Brendan ducked back out, leaving the door slightly ajar, and in a few seconds, the door was pushed open, and in walked Clive Koslowski, otherwise known by his Organization code name Spider. He was a tall man, lanky, almost gangly, dressed in baggy jeans and an oversized button down blue shirt, with a dark green overcoat two sizes too large over it all, as if trying to hide himself. Odd, because despite his long, loose limbs, he looked Human. It was just the face where things were … slightly askew.  
  
The most startling thing was his eyes. Easily twice the size of regular Human eyes, they were also undifferentiated purplish-black, like a deep and horrible bruise. His lips were thin and shaded towards purple, and when he talked he revealed thin, pointed teeth that would have looked more at home on a small predatory mammal. He'd cut his chocolate brown hair, styled it differently, but looked much the same as he had when he'd left for his former home in England several weeks ago. "Clive, hello. What brings you back here?" Xavier asked, keeping his voice light and cheerful.  
  
But it was clear something was wrong. After closing the door, Clive walked to the nearest chair with none of his preternatural grace, his slender shoulders rounded like he was a broken man. He seemed to radiate failure. "I'm sorry to be here, Professor," he mumbled towards the carpet, collapsing in the chair before his desk. "But I didn't know where else to go."  
  
Spider got his code name, as far as he could tell, from the eerie appearance of his eyes, and from the fact that his powers were control of his own personal gravity. If he wished to, he could sit on the ceiling. He could also - at least according to Chameleon - change his gravity in mid-air: he could jump as if there was no gravity at all, and land on you as if his gravity had increased fourfold. He was an expert sniper, and a devastating fighter. Chameleon had intimated Spider had been seen as the "go to" guy, one of Wolverine's natural successors. "It's perfectly all right," Xavier assured him. "How was London?"  
  
"Gone," he said, and scrubbed a hand nervously through his hair. He was looking down at his shoes, as if unable to face him. "I thought … I thought I could just pick up where I left of, you know? But time … fuck, it went on without me."  
  
Spider had been considered psychotic in the Organization; he was fearless, took much glee in killing, and he was good at it. But that had been a result of telepathic brainwashing, that Bob had "cured" him of. Clive - the Clive before - had been a law school student in England before his mysterious disappearance, his kidnapping by the Organization. Telepathic imprinting worked splendidly on him, because he had no healing factor to bollix it up. If you could judge him at an age, he seemed to be in his thirties; he was, in actuality, only twenty six.   
  
"Did you find your family?" Xavier asked, although he supposed he could guess the answer.  
  
Clive scoffed, and finally looked up at him, tears welling in his bruised eyes. "What family? My Mum died when I was twelve. It seems, in my missing years, my Dad got cancer and died as well. Everyone thought I'd dropped out and run off, even my girl, Sophie. Know who she ended up with? My bloody best friend! They got a kid now and everything. My flat is gone, my car is gone … everything, all gone. It's like I never existed at all." He sniffed, and wiped away the tears from his eyes with the back of his unusually long, slender hand. Even his fingernails had a vague lilac hue. "Maybe the worst part is they think I ran off. No one thought I was kidnapped. They figured my affliction was just too much for me to handle." He scoffed bitterly. "That was the story, you know. I had a disease that made me look like this. I mean, I was from a nice suburb - mutations didn't happen there. People just wanted to believe that. But this time, when I went back, there'd been too much news coverage about mutants. They'd decided I was a freak after all."  
  
Xavier hardly needed to be telepathic to pick up that anger. "Did something happen?"  
  
Clive eyed him warily - and there was no denying it was eerie with his large, strange eyes - then laughed breathlessly. "Something? Just the typical shite. But you know, looking at some of the idjits in the pub, I couldn't help but think how I could kill all of them. It wouldn't've even taken much. Effort on my part" He ran his hands through his hair again, messing it up, the picture of frustration and dejection. "But I'm not a killer … or at least I wasn't, until the Organization got a hold of me."  
  
"You still aren't a killer," Xavier pointed out. "You aren't responsible for what they made you do. You weren't in your right mind."  
  
He let out a sardonic snicker. "No, I was in someone else's. But I still dream about it, you know, all those people I killed. And brainwashed or not, I still did kill them. You know where I was yesterday? On the Tower Bridge, looking over the side, figuring if I jumped and increased my powers to full, I could hit the Thames at gee plus twenty: I could shatter like glass, turn my brain into hummus. It was a really lovely idea. I stood there for hours, wanting so badly to die and just get it over with. But I couldn't do it. Can you believe that? The heartless slaughterer was too bleeding scared to off himself."  
  
"Because you are not a heartless killer. You're a victim as sure as any of the rest of them."  
  
Clive looked away, so Xavier couldn't see him tearing up again. Xavier still hadn't told Storm or Scott that Spider was the mutant who had shot them, as he wasn't the same man anymore, and he shouldn't be punished for something he did that was not of his own volition. "I don't know. I don't know where to go, or what to do. I have no friends left, no family, no life, and I'm not like most of you - I can't pass for normal. I'm a freak among freaks."  
  
"You are not," Xavier insisted. He could chide him for being self-piteous, but now was not the time; he was far too fragile. He was like Logan when he first came here, only more open with it. "The Organization had no right to rob you of your free will and your life. If you kill yourself or drop out of society, you're doing exactly what they want."  
  
He sniffed again, wiped his eyes with his forearm. "Life hardly seems worth living anymore."  
  
"It is. Stay with us, and give me a chance to prove it." The sunlight streaming through the window felt warm on his back, and Xavier knew the feeling was just adding to his confidence. But how could he help Clive? He hadn't done such a great job with Logan, who was probably off seeking pointless and potentially lethal revenge right now.  
  
Although he was still slumped in the chair, looking like he was collapsing in on himself, Clive eventually nodded, peeking up at him through a fringe of bangs. He looked achingly young, like a teenager. "Okay. What've I got to lose now, right? I've already lost everything." He paused to try and get his tears under control, then asked, "Is Cressida still here?"  
  
Oh dear. This wasn't going to be easy. 


	5. Part 5

9  
  
He came to chained to a wall. Well, that was a nice medieval touch.  
  
There were no actual chains, though. Just heavy adamantium shackles bolted directly into a steel and concrete wall, and high enough up that his feet were barely touching the floor. It was the ache in his shoulders that brought him back to consciousness.  
  
He lifted his head up and looked around, his mouth feeling like it was full of bad tasting cotton, but there wasn't anything to see. He was in an unlit, featureless metal room, maybe nine by nine, tops, and he couldn't quite make out a door, although there must have been one … unless he was teleported in? Well, maybe.  
  
He was definitely alone in here; in fact, it smelled like he was the only person who had ever been in here. Was that even possible?  
  
Just as he was about to start cursing to see if there was anyone listening, Dorn's voice came over a loudspeaker, and made the metal walls tremble with the bass in his voice. "Logan, I'm glad you're awake. Just in time for the slide show."  
  
He scoffed as best as he could with almost no saliva. "That's how you're gonna torture me? With slides from your vacation to the Wisconsin Dells?" Well actually, that was brilliant and inventively cruel.  
  
"You're very funny," he replied, clearly not meaning it. "No, you misunderstand me. Not all your records were destroyed, Logan - several still exist, in our possession. You know, you may have been unwilling participant in Stryker's fun experiments with liquid metals, but you joined us voluntarily, at least to start with."  
  
"Bullshit." Hadn't Stryker said he volunteered for the adamantium? So he lied about that too. Or Dorn was lying …  
  
"You did. A man of your talents - and your mutations - didn't find it easy to exist in the world. We gave you a purpose."  
  
"Bullshit." He repeated, trying the cuffs. They were very solid, and he was pretty sure he could only get through the wall if he had the use of his claws - which he didn't, because the shackles made certain his hands were pointing straight up.   
  
A small dot of bluish light appeared on the wall across from him, like a negative of a laser sight. He looked around, but didn't see where it was coming from. "When you were outside in the world, how did you make your money, Logan? By fighting. You lost all your memories, but that was instinctive; you were born to fight."   
  
Suddenly the light grew into an image projected on the wall. It was black and white, and shot from an upper angle, suggesting a security camera had shot the footage. It showed a stark white room with a bank of wall monitors … a control room of some sort? Maybe an older one, as some of the technology looked dated. There was no sound (again, security camera footage), but it was clear from the way many of the monitors started to fade to static something was starting to go wrong.  
  
The door - metal by the look of it, perhaps aluminum - suddenly burst open as a man was propelled through it violently, sprawling back out of frame. A man came through the broken doorway a moment later, walking this time …   
  
… oh fuck, it was him, wasn't it? He was wearing dark clothes, but nothing to disguise his face, and the gloves on his hands seemed pointless. He watched himself turn to the control panel, and pop his claws a millisecond before plunging them into the console and ripping downward. Sparks vomited upward, but all he did was close his eyes against them. A shadow appeared near the doorway, but he never saw them, and he assumed it was someone working with him, as he didn't even acknowledge them in any respect.   
  
Shortly after the shadow departed, and he had finished carving up the control panel, someone - a bad guy, presumably - lunged through the doorway towards him, and he watched his other self not even look, but simply throw back an elbow, which the would be assailant seemed to run into full force, his head snapping back so violently it was a wonder it stayed attached to his shoulders. But it fell to the floor with the rest of the body, theoretically still a part of the same entity.  
  
His other self then looked up, into the security camera, and he had the most disconcerting feeling of looking into his own eyes; his own hard, angry eyes, as the few flash burned areas on his face healed over, the skin looking like a living thing oozing over his wounds. Sometimes it did look more creepy than he realized.   
  
He watched himself approach the camera, popping the claws on one hand, and slashed the camera, ending the footage. Logan felt inexplicably shaken because he looked in his own eyes and saw … what? Not nothing - something was there - but he wasn't sure he liked it.  
  
"Film can be faked," he snapped, more for himself than Dorn. "That was fucking meaningless."  
  
"Perhaps, but we've only just begun," he said, his voice silky with false amiability. "Please understand that your current accommodations are only temporary, as much for your protection as ours. I don't blame you for your anger or distrust, but I'm sure, once you see the facts for yourself, you'll be more willing to listen. Stryker was a megalomaniac, and Control was a psychopath; the follow up idea of divesting the Organization of all mutants was idiotic at best. We were always at best when we were working together, and I think we can do that again."  
  
"Fuck you."  
  
"You can lead your own team again. We can give you back some of what has been taken from you."  
  
"Oh, how fucking generous," he growled, his head feeling like it was throbbing from the rush of blood to his ears. He didn't want to hear this; he didn't want to see this. But he was the embodiment of a captive audience. And maybe it was karma - he did want to know about his past, yes? So now he was getting it, whether it was true or not.   
  
"You were important to us, Logan. We can be important to you again, if you let us," Dorn said, like some sleaze ball ex trying to get back into his old girlfriend's pants.  
  
More film came to life on the wall, this time in color - and in the middle of what appeared to be a bloody battle.  
  
And Logan couldn't shut it out.  
  
10  
  
The phone was ringing by the time Marcus got in the door.  
  
It had been a stupid mistake to even try and go out; he couldn't even get a good buzz on. He kept looking at his watch, and wondering where Logan was now. If he was captured, tortured, or simply ripping through fascists like bags of chips. He hoped the latter, but he wished he was there helping him. He'd been worried a lot more about Logan's "plan" since he found the note he left him in his medicine chest.  
  
He'd been after a condom or two for his wallet (well, you never knew when you'd get lucky, although he usually did), when he noticed the top of the box had been ripped off, and placed beside the band-aids. He discovered that Logan had written something on it, namely: Fragmenting bullet through the eye. It took him a couple of minutes to understand why Logan had written that. Was Leonie killed that way? Why the fuck would he write it on the torn lid of a condom box?!  
  
Then he got it - Logan was telling him how to kill him, if worse came to worst. A fragmenting bullet through the eye would probably do it; it would   
  
burst into dozens upon dozens of tiny pieces of shrapnel on contact, and would bounce around the inside of his adamantium plated skull, shredding his brain like it was caught in a tornado of razor blades. It was unlikely that his healing factor could compensate for such massive damage rapidly, or at all. It was the perfect way to kill him if you could make the shot, and Marc knew he could make the shot.  
  
So, obviously, did Logan.  
  
Why would he worry about having a death contingency plan unless he thought it was highly possible those bastards would catch him and brainwash him again? And the fact that he decided to stick the note in his medicine cabinet and not tell him indicated that he didn't want him to know right away - another bad sign. Shit.   
  
Now he knew Logan had something of a suicidal streak in him, and he would take the most stupid, boneheaded risks, assuming he would survive and the gamble would be worth it. Marc enjoyed that style of logic himself, but - unlike Logan - he knew his limits. There were some roads that could only lead to pain. Logan had taken one of those, hadn't he?  
  
Oh, fuck him! What the fuck did he think he was going to accomplish? Did he think he could cut some kind of deal with those lying bastards, get them to spare his friends? How could he, for a single second, believe that they would ever live up to their end of the bargain? He was smarter than that.  
  
But he was also desperate, and sometimes, when you were hurt, you just lashed out without thinking. Logan was really good at doing that. Shit.  
  
Now he really knew he should leave early. What if that stupid bastard had gotten himself into some real trouble?  
  
He rubbed his eyes as he grabbed the cordless phone and barked, "Yeah?" Mentally he was already deciding what weapons to take.  
  
"Marcus, where is he?" Xavier asked, his voice cold.  
  
"I don't have time for you," he snapped. "Look, he hasn't called yet. When I know, you'll know."  
  
"I hope you realize I didn't want to do this," Xavier replied, and Marcus knew what he was going to do the instant before he did it. He intended to toss the receiver away, but Xavier, that bastard, had him.  
  
"Son of a bitch," he snarled through gritted teeth, as he knew Xavier had just trespassed into his mind. "You had no right - "  
  
"He left you instructions on how to kill him?" Xavier gasped, appalled. "And you still wouldn't tell us where you sent him?"  
  
"He is not one of your kids," he snapped, still feeling like throwing the phone across the room. "And your idea of helping him is pretty fucked. You keep information from him 'cause his mind is "fragile", yet when he suffers yet another devastating blow, you expect him to swallow the pain until he chokes on it. Do you wonder why he didn't go back to you guys?"  
  
"He wished to protect us."  
  
"And you never fucking helped him, ever, in your entire goddamn life. You gave him a place to crash, but that's it."  
  
"That's hardly true."  
  
"Oh really? What have you done for him lately, huh?"  
  
Xavier was quiet for so long, he wondered if he was actually going to admit he'd done squat. "You sent him back to those people," he finally said, his voice like liquid nitrogen.  
  
"I gave him a purpose," he shot back. "I gave him a reason not to lose his fucking mind." Xavier said nothing to that, because what could he say? After enough time had passed that Marc felt his point had sunk in, he added, "I'm comin' with you."  
  
"Absolutely not."  
  
"I know these people like you never could," he replied just as coldly. "I know how they lay out their bases, and what weaponry they prefer. Can you say the same thing?"  
  
"There will be no killing," Xavier demanded. "I will not have it."  
  
"I will not have you telling me how I can or can't defend myself or others; I'm not one of your people. I'm going as an independent, only for Logan's sake. Is that clear?"  
  
Xavier was silent for another long moment, and he could almost feel the waves of disdain over the telephone line. "At least try to be a team player. We all want to make sure Logan is all right."  
  
Xavier was no longer holding him frozen to the spot, so he moved to his bedroom, where an oversized duffle bag filled with weapons sat on his bed, waiting to go. His laptop, in a carrier bag, sat beside it. "You know as well as I do, physically he'll always be fine. Mentally and emotionally is another story."  
  
"I realize that."  
  
"Do you? Then start acting like it before you lose him for good." With that, he pressed the receiver button, and hung up on him, tossing the handset aside for good measure. It was so funny how a telepath, who should have known almost everything, sometimes knew nothing.   
  
Oh shit - did he ask where they were going to pick him up? Oh damn it! Well, he'd get up to the roof - they had a jet, right?  
  
He bet they didn't even serve peanuts, the cheap bastards.  
  
11  
  
The funny thing was, he felt feverish and disoriented, like maybe he was having someone else's dream.  
  
Dreams, actually. Plural.  
  
The constant films felt like the visual equivalent of getting crap shoved down your throat. It would have been like A Clockwork Orange if they put some kind of apparatus on his eyes to keep them from closing, but they didn't have to, and they knew it. Logan couldn't help but look, especially when they had sound. His life as a car crash.  
  
He stopped telling himself it was faked about twenty two murders ago.  
  
Right now there was some kind of grainy color footage - time coded in the lower right corner, showing a tall man with movie star good looks and reddish brown hair, who walked around like he knew exactly how good looking he was. He had come to understand by the fact that people's heads blew up in sudden, glorious Technicolor that the smooth pretty boy with the glittering gold eyes was Timebomb. He seemed pretty damn impressed with himself, and never seemed to exert in any way to use his power. Xi was right - he just made people's heads explode. Theoretically, a very limited power, but there was no denying it was pretty fucking effective. He wondered if Timebomb ever tried to turn his ability on the Organization - maybe that "lucky ricochet" that capped him wasn't really all that lucky. There was an arrogance in his stance that suggested he only did something if it was worth his while, or a laugh. Otherwise he was out the door.  
  
He'd seen Xi too, looking achingly young and wild eyed, shimmering slightly due to her activated force field. He'd also seen Static, beautiful and fierce; Reaper, the epitome of detachment; and he'd seen, several times, a frail and icy looking brunette who, without warning, shot fire from her hands, and often had her entire arms catch on fire, with no appreciable injury - obviously Inferno. With a sick twisting in his stomach, he occasionally saw Shrike; the bastard looked smug and insane even back then. Every now and then, he saw mutants he didn't recognize, and wondered if any of them were the names Chameleon had mentioned in her note. Not all of them apparently used their power on screen.  
  
Not all the films had sound, and they were evenly split between color and black and white, but most were taken at odd or oblique angles, suggesting that most were taken secretively, or by security cameras. They mostly seemed concerned with breaking into things, breaking things, and killing relatively anonymous soldiers … and the occasional mutants. He did a lot of killing; he was very good at it.  
  
He also seemed to bark a lot of orders, at least before he went totally psychotic. Is that what Dorn meant by "leading his own team again"? So why didn't he recognize himself?  
  
Of course he did, physically at least - although sometimes he would have sworn his eyes looked blue. What the hell was that about? But his postures, movements, something … something made him almost unrecognizable to himself. It was surreal. It was like having an out of body experience, but then glimpsing your twin in a parallel universe, removed from your own.  
  
He was wondering if it was getting to him, or they were pumping in a gas he couldn't smell, because he felt strangely enervated and defeated, the heat in his mind making his eyelids sag. God, he was just their little robot, wasn't he? Why the fuck did he draw the lucky straw?   
  
Maybe he had joined them voluntarily, once. Then he found he couldn't leave, and they made an example of him. Or at least that was an interpretation that he felt he could live with.  
  
When this film finally came to an end, the pause between reels, he hung his head to his chest, and muttered, "Make it stop."  
  
"Are you ready to talk this over like civil Human beings?" Dorn's voice replied.  
  
"Whatever the fuck," he said, feeling hollow behind his eyes and in his mind. Maybe they had drugged him. "Just stop it. I don't want to see anymore."  
  
"Perhaps I shouldn't have let you see so much. It is hard to take in all at once, isn't it?"   
  
The cuffs suddenly unlatched with a click, and Logan realized how heavily he was hanging from them only when he almost fell to the floor. He managed not to, but his arms hung limp at his side, fiery hot from his healing factor going to work on his strained and torn shoulders. He leaned against the wall, trying to will strength back into his legs, rubbing his arms as soon as he could move them.   
  
The wall beside him suddenly unsealed with a gasp, revealing a door he had never seen. It opened on a dimly lit steel lined corridor, and he expected more soldiers to come in, but they didn't. He crept towards the door curiously, braced for a paralyzer or maybe another drug dart, but there really was no one out in the corridor. It was a very narrow hall, featureless metal, and seemed to dead end about fifty feet down, although surely there was another hidden door.  
  
He could have started slashing his way through, he knew it, but he heard a hidden door hiss open on the left side, and curiosity got the better of him. Besides, there was question he needed to have an answer to before he could move on.   
  
Peering in the doorway, he found Dorn sitting alone, behind a metal desk. That's all that was in the small, boxy room - Dorn, his desk and chair, and an unoccupied chair. Something was very wrong here - where were the guards? Dorn gestured to the chair before him. "Please, Logan, have a seat. How are your arms?"   
  
He glared at him and didn't answer as he slumped down into the chair. "Why me?"  
  
"What?" He looked genuinely puzzled.  
  
"Why me? Why the fuck was I picked to be your guinea pig? Why did you have to control me? Why didn't you let me go?"  
  
"Ah, that." He sighed, and clasped his hands together on top of the sterile desk, giving him an anemic, insurance salesman sort of smile. "Well, that is a tricky question, and I don't have the entire answer, if there is one. But you were special, Logan. Your healing factor is difficult to replicate. There have been other mutants with healing factors - Shrike, for example - but none had factors quite as wide ranging and powerful as yours. We've attempted to induce it in others, but the results have been mixed."  
  
"Chimera," he said glumly.  
  
Dorn nodded. "That was a sad state of affairs, and a worst case scenario case in point. But it is an excellent example."  
  
"That was it? My mutation?"  
  
"Well, before it officially became the Organization - before it was known you were a mutant - you were highly prized for your language skills. Oh, you did have quality fighting skills - you were strangely good with blades, which are - as you know - tricky weapons. But you were more highly prized as a polylinguist."  
  
He stared at him blankly, still in the grasp of that strange hollowed out feeling. This still seemed totally unreal. "What?"  
  
"Yes, I know - a bit odd, isn't it? But according to the records I've seen, your linguistic abilities had already garnered you major attention in the intelligence community; there was some general jealously that Canada snagged you first. I mean, everybody had linguists in their employ, but one who spoke almost every major language, and fluently at that? They said you could talk to people in five different languages at once, and never fuck up, never lose your place or your stride; it was all like one language to you. On top of that, you had an ability to get lost and blend into a city like no other, and some thought you had Sherlock Homes-ian levels of deduction. Of course, when it came out that you were a mutant, it quickly became obvious that it wasn't superior deduction you possessed, simply the ability to smell and sense things that standard Humans could not. But in the intelligence community, pre-mutant "outing", you were an extremely hot property. Anyone can be trained to use a gun or surveillance equipment; most people cannot do it while speaking English, Portuguese, and Mandarin."  
  
His mind reeled at this. "I was a spy, not an assassin?" And they wanted him not because he could kill, but because he was polylingual? He was having an out of body experience.  
  
Dorn gave him an avuncular smile, like he was indulging him in a particularly silly fantasy. "Well, some might argue that that can be one and the same. But when you joined the Canadian branch of the group that would eventually become the Organization, you were famous for your language skills, not your more lethal ones."  
  
"The group that would become the Organization?" It felt like there might be an out there, at least from a moral standpoint.  
  
"Yes. The Organization sprung out of a secret intelligence network born in the ashes of World War Two. Several allied countries - namely America, Canada, and Britain - saw gaps in the existing intelligence services in their own countries, and put together a secret unit that could work with each other, but independent of any formal government tie - so they didn't have to play by any rules, you understand. Worked well for a while, as far as I know. Which is not at all, because it was deeper than black ops. No files exist - can you believe that? So I'm going on hearsay, you understand."  
  
"It was a dirty group," he said numbly. Deep black ops, no records, no government ties … all that didn't exactly add up to legal fun, did it?  
  
Dorn shrugged, but he looked absurdly pleased with himself. Logan wanted to tear his face off. "Is an act committed in the name of democracy ever dirty?"  
  
He glared at him. "You can't be serious."  
  
"No, I'm not - not really. But I thought it might make you feel better."  
  
He was going to kill him. He'd do it now if he didn't feel too defeated to move. "So it became the Organization, and devoted its energies to hunting and killing mutants?"  
  
"Not overnight. Initially it was mobilized to handle the emerging threats of mutants, long before the word mutants entered the public vernacular. I think it was shortly after that time that you went missing."  
  
"Missing?"  
  
"I don't know all the details, but it's said you faked your own death on a mission behind the Iron Curtain. It was hard to swallow, because everyone was convinced you were the luckiest man alive - did you ever get hurt? - but considering the group and the place of your death, it was near impossible to confirm or deny - no one could get enough proof one way or another. But someone higher up insisted you were still alive, and were out there; they insisted you be hunted down.  
  
"Still, it seems cooler heads prevailed. It was only then that they began to realize that the burgeoning mutant threat could only be handled by other mutants. They knew, from a genetic profile checked just before you left that you were indeed one - and didn't that make sense? Your ability to avoid injury seemed positively supernatural, and you hadn't aged at all, or ever taken a sick day. That's not even mentioning your ability with languages, although that's never been conclusively proven to be a mutation. It's said they cut a deal with you, and you returned voluntarily, under the new code name Wolverine. But it was an uneasy alliance that eventually fell apart - some say it was a mission that went South, others say Stryker was somehow involved, perhaps both - and you stormed off, saying that you quit. It wasn't pretty.  
  
"You were free for several years, as you were adept at falling in between the cracks of society, keeping a low profile, a dozen aliases, and not leaving an evidence trail. Some say you were trained far too well. We have some proof you were married to a woman in Japan during that period of time. Were you aware of that? I never pegged you as the settling down type; you were always the perfect stereotype of the misanthropic loner."  
  
Logan said nothing, just glared at him. Was he getting some of his strength back, now that he was breathing cleaner air? "You kidnapped me."  
  
Dorn dipped his head in confirmation. "By that time Stryker had worked his way up the chain of command, and he wanted you back quite badly. He felt you were an ideal test subject, and Control agreed this was a worthwhile endeavor. There had been others before you, but in general they … died. It wasn't pretty either."  
  
"Shrike didn't."  
  
"No, but he was considered a failure. Not only was his healing factor sub-par - he almost died after the first operation - but his mental state was questionable at best. He had a history of mental instability, but Stryker had grown to like him, and he was Control's right hand man for some time. They just didn't want to admit he was a liability." Dorn leaned forward, as if he was about to impart great wisdom. "I'll be the first to admit that was a mistake. No one should have made you their test subject. You were an extremely valuable operative, and still are. We'd like you back with us, Logan, but this time we'll do things differently. No more lines, no more telepathic manipulations; we think it's in everyone's best interest to work together. And no more senseless deaths of mutants either! There are much more grave threats in the world, and Humanity must realize that the mutants they scorn could very well be their only saviors in the time to come.  
  
"You will have a team of your own choosing, and full intelligence access. You don't have to cut your ties with Xavier, but I'm sure you can understand that this might not go down well with him. We'll even give you a home. My first thought was a high tech condo overlooking the Potomac, but I then realized that was not your typical dwelling of choice. So you can have a cabin in the wilderness, any wilderness - the Russian Steppes if you desire, so far away from other people they'll be just a rumor. You name it. We want you back, Logan. And we want to make it up to you for all the senseless suffering."  
  
Logan nodded, letting out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. All this because they wanted him to come in from the cold? They wanted to atone for their misdeeds?  
  
Did he believe one word of what Dorn had told him about his supposed past? And the supposed reasons for bringing him here?  
  
In a single swift movement, he jumped to his feet, popped the claws on his right hand, and buried them in Dorn's throat. "You want to make it up to me?!" He roared into the man's startled, pained face, his pale eyes as wide as silver dollars. He'd reached up and grabbed Logan's wrist, but now he didn't know what to do, because if he tried to wrestle his arm away he would shred his own throat. Blood was already coming out, staining his shirt, and he started to cough, gasp for air, and it started oozing out of his mouth. "You fucks tortured me, you took my life, and then you murdered my fucking daughter! You used me as a puppet - you made me murder again and again and again in your name! You have destroyed everything I ever cared about, even destroyed my fucking mind, and now you want to kiss and make up?!" He stank of acrid fear, the smell so pungent it was making his eyes water - or at least that's what Logan told himself was making his eyes water. "Kiss my ass, Dorn! Fuck you all!" And with that, he ripped his hand away, and spun to face the door.  
  
He heard Dorn's head hit the ground long before the dull thud of his body followed, the chair casters squealing on the matte steel floor.  
  
Logan popped the claws on his other hand, so livid and seething with pent up rage his entire world seemed to take on a reddish tint. He had killed the head man, so he knew a shitstorm would be coming down on him. But he didn't care. He hoped they were prepared to beat him down until his face looked like ground chuck and he had a hole the size of a bread box through his abdomen, because that's what they were going to have to do to stop him.  
  
He was so angry right now, he felt like he could kill the entire fucking world. 


	6. Part 6

He expected to be swarmed by an entire platoon as the door opened, but it opened onto complete darkness …  
  
" - knew he would do that," a voice said distantly, faintly.  
  
Logan suddenly realized he could not only see nothing but black, but he couldn't quite feel his body anymore. Also, the scents had all changed: now he could smell several people, ripe with the chemicals they wore (deodorant, perfume, hair gel, soap, fabric softener), and the voice ... the voice had been Dorn's.  
  
Oh, son of a bitch. No wonder it felt like an out of body experience. In a way, it was.  
  
"Do we have time to dick around here, sir?" A male voice said - Logan didn't recognize it. "You yourself said we have to assume that his friends are on their way."  
  
"I want to give the secondary personality implant a chance to activate," Dorn replied, his voice carrying the same insufferable smugness that it had in the mindscape.   
  
"There is no secondary personality," a female voice said. It was high pitched and young, and Logan would swear it was familiar. Who had that voice? "Not anymore. I keep telling you that, but do you listen to me? It's gone!"  
  
"It can't be gone, Candace," Dorn told her. Candace?   
  
"But it is! Where it used to be is a big blank spot, and there's some kind of residual energy in his mind that really hurts. It's almost telepathic, but ... like, ten thousand times that. I don't wanna keep going back in there."  
  
Logan recognized the voice, which gave him a brief cramp in his belly: Delirium. Candace was the telepath they called Delirium.   
  
"You were told Xavier might leave traps," Dorn told her, as warmly and calmly as a patient father. "You told me you were ready for that."  
  
"It's not that old coot's shit!" She protested. Her voice cracked when she got emotional; it was really annoying. "It's ... weird. It's almost not Human, ya know? It's like he's had a star or two camping in his brain. And I don't mean Johnny Depp, either."  
  
Logan had determined he was not blind, but had something heavy and metallic - a helmet? - over the top half of his head. He could now feel shackles - adamantium by the smell - over his wrists, ankles, waist, and throat. They were taking no chances that he could hurt them, or get away.  
  
"You're not making sense," Dorn told her.  
  
"I'm prepping the new chip," the other male voice said. New chip?  
  
"I am so!" Delirium protested. "I think you must be right about that Bob guy - if he's what's been in his head, there's no fucking way he's Human. Not with power like that." She paused, and then added, "He's awake, you know. He's listening."  
  
"That's to be expected," Dorn replied, not at all surprised. "Welcome back, Logan."  
  
"Fuck you," he snapped. "Get this thing offa me."  
  
"Sorry, you know we can't do that. You really should know better than to ask that of the man you just decapitated." He could hear the smug little smile in his voice. "So tell me, is our dear Candace right? Is Bob not Human?"  
  
"He's more Human than you."  
  
"Indeed?" Again the superiority, leaking through like a bad smell. God, he wanted to kill him - slowly. "I find that somewhat hard to believe."  
  
"It was all lies, all of it," Logan said, but that was mostly to reassure himself. But wasn't he just a little bit disappointed?   
  
"Oh no, not at all," Dorn replied glibly. "Unless you don't trust your own mind. You do trust your own mind, don't you?"  
  
"Bite me, asshole."  
  
"You missed your calling as a poet." Dorn paused long enough that Logan figured he had turned to someone else - from what he said, to Delirium. "One more try. The secondary personality could be very deeply buried."  
  
"But sir-" the other man complained.  
  
"Prep the chip," Dorn agreed, once again sounding like that endlessly patient father. "Have it ready to go. If there really is no vestige left, give it to him."  
  
"Chip? What the fuck is that?" Logan asked angrily, but he feared he knew.   
  
"Just a little something that will make you feel like your old self again," Dorn said, his voice oozing with smarm.  
  
That was exactly what Logan was afraid of.  
  
12  
  
Storm's idea of going in hot was using a big wind to bust the gates open. Marc wondered if that had ever really worked.  
  
He walked in the newly open gates, big wind at his back, pulling out two handguns as he announced, "Avon calling. Wanna pucker up and kiss this?"  
  
"My god - you mean people talk like that outside of Jerry Bruckheimer movies?" Rogue asked in disbelief.  
  
Marc didn't really understand the make up of this team. It was Storm, Piotr the big metal guy, Rogue, her surprisingly fey boyfriend Bobby, Brendan the half-demon kid, who was limping slightly but insisted on coming because it was Logan who was in trouble, and he "owed him one", and some weirdly lean and lanky big eyed guy called Spider, who apparently used to work for the Org too, and was coming along - despite obviously being distraught by something - because he wished to hurt the Organization. According to a very annoyed Storm (boy, was she giving him the cold front now), Scott was "on sabbatical", with Marc took to mean he'd had a nervous breakdown, or simply left before he couldn't take anymore of Mutie High. Which tracked, actually - people that high strung were always the first to snap.  
  
It was funny, but he got the general impression everyone didn't like him. Which was fine with him, but he was curious why. Of course, they also seemed to be wary of Spider, but he was so freaky looking, that almost made sense. Spider was pretty quiet too, and mopey, and seemed to never look directly at Storm, as if he felt guilty about something. What? Oh hell, he hoped he never slept with her; he didn't want to imagine that guy in bed.  
  
"There could be mines," Spider warned.   
  
Marc tapped the goggles now resting on his forehead. "I see in infrared, bud, and I can tell you there are no unnatural temperature variations in the ground; we're clear."  
  
"That's handy," Brendan muttered. He was all green and spiky - his demon form. The Russian was all armored up too, making him look like a rejected Terminator design. Spider was closest behind Marcus on his right, while Rogue - ironically enough - was closest to him on his left, with Brendan, Metal Head, and Bobby fey following in a sort of zig zag placement, all tricked out in their black leather uniforms (save for Spider, who - like him - was just dressed like a normal person, not a leather boy parade). Storm was bringing up the rear with her huge, targeted gusts of wind, making her rather gaudy cape and white hair flair dramatically in the wind. She was probably a big old drama queen; she just had that vibe.  
  
"Professor, anything?" Storm asked, presumably into the little ear piece thing she wore. Xavier was monitoring the situation back at Cerebro - somehow, he could use his telepathy against these jackasses if he had to, even though he was half a continent away.   
  
After a moment, she said, "He's saying he's not getting any mutant readings here - or any Humans either. He's telling me the place is abandoned."  
  
Marc scowled at the boxy building ahead of them, and wished he was surprised. But that tracked with what he knew of the Organization: they probably grabbed Logan and booked. They couldn't have been as stupid as they often seemed.   
  
"What?" The tin man asked.  
  
"I ain't smelling anyone, if that's worth anything," Brendan offered. "But I can't smell as well as Logan."  
  
Marc holstered his gun - could the Org successfully shield all of themselves from Xavier's telepathy and his infrared sight (nonetheless a demon nose) - and quickly knelt down on the hard packed sand, slipping his laptop bag to the ground and quickly pulling it out. That was the true slogan of the smart mercenary nowadays - have laptop, will travel. "Storm, blow the doors," he said idly, booting up.  
  
Rogue stopped near him, and came to peer over his shoulder. "What are you doing?"  
  
"I don't take orders from you," Storm replied icily.   
  
"Fine, I'll lob a grenade in that direction, whichever. But if there's someone hiding in there, we really should roust them."  
  
"What exactly are you doing?" Someone else asked. By the British accent alone, he knew it was Spider. He had no idea what his powers were, beyond looking fairly repulsive, but Marc really didn't really want to know. Hopefully he didn't create webs through a spinner on his abdomen, or eat flies.   
  
Marc felt the static electricity building around them, making reddish blue haloes in the side of his vision as he loaded up the probably file he had created earlier. "Trying to figure out where they took Logan."  
  
There was a burst of lighting - a sharp red flash in the corner of his eye - followed by the sound of the armored doors of the base warping on their tracks, locks shattering like icicles. He didn't bother to look and see if anyone came out firing, as he figured that's what the rest of the super squad was here for. Someone leaned into his peripheral line of sight, but rather than somewhat fearless Rogue, it was Spider.  
  
He tried to talk to him on the jet, but Spider was even more taciturn than Logan. Marc had asked him if he had "worked" with Logan in the Organization, and all he said was, "Not in the Organization, no. Not that I recall." And that was it - after that, he went back to staring at the floor or the bulkhead, anything but make eye contact with anyone. Was he suicidal, or just painfully shy?  
  
"How do you know where he is so fast?" Rogue wondered.   
  
"Let's check out the place, just in case," Piotr said, tromping across the sand to the broken in base. Bobby followed, as did a slightly reluctant Brendan.  
  
"Yes, how do you know?" Storm asked, although it seemed she was following the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Demon Kid (well, no metaphor could hold that long) into the base.   
  
"Probability projections, based on recently accumulated data. It obviously worked here." Marc got the sense that Spider was studying his screen with a sniper's scrutiny, possibly memorizing it. He was a deeply creepy guy, but he could probably kick a surprising amount of ass if he had been in the Organization.  
  
"These are all base locations?" Spider asked. He had a mid-London accent, a curious kind caught between upper crust plummy and mangled Cockney patois. It would have been soothing if there was any emotion in his voice at all.  
  
"Potential base locations. But the best bets." The next best bet popped up at the top of the list, and he said, "Okay, this is most likely where they moved him."  
  
"Based on what evidence?" Spider asked.   
  
Oh great - Beyonce's cousin was gone, and now he had to deal with freaky antithesis of Hugh Grant interrogating him. "Lots of shit - I've been after these fuckers for a while."  
  
"But just 'cause it's kinda close doesn't mean they took him there," Rogue chimed in. Jesus, these people.  
  
"True. Do you have a better idea?" He asked her.  
  
His answer was a deathly teenage girl scowl.  
  
Storm emerged from the base shaking her head, and Brendan, following immediately behind, elaborated, "He's been here with some other people, but they're gone now."  
  
"Great - let's hop back in the jet and get a move on," Marc said, shutting down his laptop. He knew where they needed to go.   
  
"And what if he's not where you think he is?" Spider asked. This guy was really getting on his nerves. And they were both arachnid code names, right? Shouldn't they get along?   
  
"Then we keep hitting the likely places in order, until we find him."  
  
Storm gave him a withering look. "You call that a plan?"  
  
He shrugged with his hands. "Got a better one? I'm all ears."  
  
"Better than me - I'm all eyes," Spider said, walking back towards the broken gate. Wow! Weirdy cracked a funny! And in that droll British way too. Neato bandito; he wasn't all bad.  
  
Tin Man went back to skin, and as a result seemed much less impressive as he passed through the gate, along with the rest of the Super Squad. Marc stayed behind, packing up his laptop, and Storm loitered around too - what? As "leader", was she obligated to make sure everyone else got on the plane before she did?  
  
After a moment, she ripped off her black earpiece, and leaned down to snap, "The Professor won't deign to argue with you, but I will. He's helped Logan more than you will ever know, and he's never set him up with a vampire or sent him to his potential death. If you ever talk that way to the Professor or any one of us again, I will blast you into next week." She then stormed (ha again!) off towards the jet, putting her ear piece back in. A shame, because she couldn't see his mock shivering.  
  
She really needed to work on her threats. But hell, everyone needed to start somewhere.  
  
13  
  
Bob woke up covered in snakes, and was careful to shift slowly, so he didn't actually crush any. They must have liked the heat of his energy, or maybe they were just really lonely.  
  
"Tea?" Degei chimed in, as Bob helped the napping coral snakes and boa constrictors off of himself. Boas were heavy.  
  
"Sure," he said, as enough of the snakes had moved away so he could sit up. He was on a nest of blankets in the corner of Degei's cottage, as that was as close to furniture as he got. Oh sure, he had the table and chairs, but only so he could properly enjoy his tea. An essentially bodiless snake god had no call for material goods.  
  
Bob stood slowly, still watching his step until all the garter snakes hustled out of the way, and rubbed his temple, although the ache had all but subsided now. It was just psychosomatic at the moment.   
  
"Did I understand you correctly," Degei asked, as he took a seat at the carved stone table. "Or did you imply a Human hurt you?"  
  
Bob sighed as he cupped his ceramic mug of spiced tea, inhaling the fragrant steam as a tiny green snake curled up in the sugar bowl/ How cute - would it fetch him a lump if he asked for one? "Things have gotten needlessly complicated, Deg."  
  
"How so?"  
  
"One of Cammy's final acts was to corrupt a Human."  
  
"Corrupt? How badly?"  
  
"I'm not sure. It's hard to say, 'cause she never trusted me in the first place. And I didn't get a good enough measure before she sucker punched me." Or did he? Was he lying to Degei as well as himself? Sure, Jean generally disliked him, but enough to put a bolt between his eyes?   
  
Degei's silver eyes studied him warily, his tea cup half way to his thin, recessed lips. Snakes adjusted themselves on his torso, his shoulders roiling like waves. "She was powerful enough to sucker punch you?"  
  
"I didn't have my guard up. I didn't want to accidentally hurt her." What a laugh that was now. He rubbed his forehead, and briefly watched the snakes slither in and out of the glass free stone window. It was a nice day in the snake universe, but then again, it usually was. The light was pearlescent, and gave the ever shifting landscape - constructed of nothing but snakes - an attractive wet sheen, like a spring shower had scoured everything clean.  
  
"How badly corrupted is she? She must be pretty bad if she can hurt you, guard down or not."  
  
"Yeah." He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and tried hard to plot his next move. He needed to confirm how much - if any - of Jean was left, but hopefully without getting hurt again, or having to hurt her in return.  
  
Deg paused for a significant period of time, long enough to take a sip of his tea, and incorporate a new rattlesnake into his midsection. "If Camaxtli gave her all his powers, she will have to be dealt with."  
  
"Believe me, I know." The question was, was there some way he could do it without going all out?  
  
If there was any bit of Jean left, and he killed her, Logan would never forgive him. And he wouldn't blame him. So how was he going to figure it out from a distance?  
  
Shit. It was always something.  
  
*****  
  
Logan didn't see what they hoped to accomplish, especially since he knew what was going on. But they had to play their games; they had to get into his head and muck around like it was an abandoned amusement park created just for them.  
  
The darkness and his limited awareness beyond the headgear they had strapped on to him fell away, to be replaced by a snowy forest, which looked damn familiar. "Did you have an awareness of the other personality?" Dorn asked. He was standing beneath a pine tree, ankle deep in snow.  
  
Logan turned towards him and took a few menacing steps, wondering how many times he'd have to kill this fuck before they finally abandoned their salvage mission inside his head. "What the fuck do you want from me?"  
  
Dorn crossed his arms over his chest and looked at him askance, like he was being a deliberate idiot. "What is it you want, Logan? Do you even know, or are you just acting out of pure, belligerent rage?"  
  
"You want rage?" He snarled, and lunged, popping his claws as he slashed out -   
  
- and landed face first on a hard wooden floor.   
  
Logan shoved himself up, snarling at himself as much as Dorn. The arctic landscape had not only suddenly switched to the Way Station, but Dorn was now behind him.  
  
"This may be your mind, but you don't control anything here," Dorn said smugly (could he say nothing without the smugness?). "Fighting us is like fighting yourself."  
  
"I do that a lot," he growled, getting to his feet. When he spun to face Dorn, he found the landscape had shifted once more, this time to the silver metal corridors outside Cerebro. Dorn was standing at the head of the hall, continuing to eye him like a unique species of insect.  
  
"This is pointless, you know. As much as I hate to ever quote Star Trek, resistance really is futile, Logan. You're postponing the inevitable."  
  
"Fighting is never pointless," he snapped, and then, distantly, felt something like … a needle, jammed into his heart. He gasped, the pain disappearing almost as soon as it appeared, and he demanded, "What the fuck did you just do to me?"  
  
"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about." Then he gave him a small, tight smile that looked constipated and painful, his eyes as bright and hard as diamonds.  
  
With a roar of rage, Logan launched himself at Dorn once more, braced for the shifting of the world around him.  
  
But this time he got more than that. It felt like he slammed head first into an adamantium wall, sending explosions of light through his brain as he slid to the ground, tasting blood and relatively certain he'd lost a few teeth on impact. He was back in the snow again, the ice melting into his clothes, and he looked to see Dorn once more behind him, arms crossed over his chest and a half curious, half amused look on his face. "We could do this all day, but seriously, you don't have that kind of time."  
  
"What the fuck do you want from me?!" He roared, jumping back up to his feet. He popped his claws - as futile as it all was - and spit out a mouthful of blood, a shocking crimson splotch on the pure white snow.  
  
"Maybe you should ask yourself that, Logan. You used to be a reasonably bright man, and a very subtle killer. Stryker really did a number on you, didn't he? You don't even know what you want anymore. You're just a drowning man, flailing and not sure you even want to be saved."  
  
"Cut the shit. What the fuck do you want?"  
  
Dorn shrugged, "It doesn't matter, does it? If I get it, even you won't know. So tell me, how did your Aussie miracle worker wipe out the secondary personality?"  
  
"He didn't. I did," he lied. Well, that had been what Bob was aiming for, right?  
  
Dorn shook his head, frowning in disappointment. "Now, see, the old Logan would have known there's no point lying in a mindscape."  
  
"The old Logan was an automaton," he replied coldly. "Live with it - your puppet is no more."  
  
"Not true. He's just waiting to emerge from his tomb." His smile transformed into a smirk that was so arrogant that Logan wanted to rip it off his face without using his claws.  
  
And that's when he felt it. A strange prickling sensation, an eerie, familiar feeling shuddering down his spine, and he knew they weren't alone.   
  
Oh shit.  
  
Dorn cocked his head, as if listening to something only he could hear, and he said, apropos of nothing, "Is it Xavier?"  
  
"Who is this?" Jean asked him, materializing right beside him.  
  
"Get out of here," he hissed.  
  
Dorn stared at her in disbelief. "Now which one are you?"   
  
Delirium of the multicolored hair suddenly appeared beside Dorn, and she looked both confused and pissed off. "Back off, bitch."  
  
Jean simply raised an eyebrow at her, and then chuckled coldly. "Were you just trying to hurt me, girl?"  
  
Delirium's odd eyes - one blue, one black - widened, and she started to look scared. "It didn't work on her. I don't think she's Human - "  
  
"Get us out of here," Dorn interrupted, cracks starting to show in his superior façade.  
  
"I've been trying," she replied, almost whining. She grabbed Dorn's arm, as if seeking support, but even before he got the sense of Jean's power surging, he knew they were fucked.  
  
She wasn't even remotely Human anymore, was she?  
  
Jean seemed to glow, her aura an aurora borealis of translucent flame, and she said, in a voice that hardly sounded like hers at all, "You wish to go? Fine - let's go."  
  
And with a bright, violent flash of light, Logan's limited world was thrown into complete and utter darkness. 


	7. Part 7

14  
  
Logan jolted awake, still in darkness, and almost painfully disoriented.  
  
"Jeannie?" He asked, and, forgetting he was strapped down to the table, tried to sit up.   
  
The metal fell away from his head and wrists, and when they hit the floor they shattered into dust, as if they were one million years old. What the fuck?  
  
"Jean?" He repeated, and suddenly realized he could only smell two things: superheated air, and blood.  
  
Looking around and brushing the dust of his former shackles off of him, he saw he was in a lab of some sort, all chromed steel and glass, a sterile dungeon. There were three bodies on the floor, but only two had heads. There was a huge splatter of blood on the far wall, along with a clump of lavender hair. Delirium's head had exploded like Timebomb had come in the door while he was out cold.  
  
He looked around in mild disbelief. Was this another mindscape scenario? But how could it be? Jean wouldn't do something like this to him … would she?  
  
He confirmed one of the dead men on the floor was Dorn before walking out the door, popping his claws preemptively. The funny thing was, while Delirium's head had obviously burst, there was no signs of violence done to Dorn or the other man; they were simply dead.   
  
He knew when he smelled the charred air and death in the hallway that there was no longer any need for caution, or for his sprung claws. Jean had hit the entire base. "What have you done?" He asked, horrified. The only noise was the thrum of the air conditioner, echoing through the graveyard quiet building, until his claws retracted with a quiet wet noise.   
  
Walking down the metal halls in an aimless fashion, he eventually came across bodies - soldiers fallen where they had been walking, caught in mid-stride by … what?   
  
By Jean - whatever she was, whoever she was.  
  
After a moment, he decided to find whatever passed for a control center here, but even as he walked around, he felt lost even when he had a vague idea where he was going. Jean couldn't have done this - she didn't kill.  
  
"I would do this, not you," he said aloud, even though he knew she was no longer here. But he was just trying to understand what must have happened while he was out. How long was he out?  
  
The control room was full of dead people, mostly slumped on control panels, their wall of small television and computer monitors showing nothing but static and idiot cursors blinking on empty black screens. There wasn't even white noise coming over the speakers, because the transmitters were completely, utterly blown.   
  
Logan idly pushed one of the corpses out of its chair, and it hit the floor with a dull thud. Logan sat in his former seat, attempted to bring something up on any screen, but of course it was pointless. It was all destroyed.  
  
Jean had killed the entire base - machines as well as people.  
  
Some small, logical part of his mind tried to figure out how she could do that. If she manifested, she could … what? Electromagnetic pulse? That would do it. She'd have had to shield him from it somehow, but surely she could have managed. Just like she could have managed to molecularly destabilize his shackles; she could have done that last bit even before she got Camaxtli's powers.  
  
Camaxtli.   
  
Logan rested his head in his hands, and wondered if - dead or not - Camaxtli had had the last laugh on all of them. Bastard. He should have taken him; why hadn't he taken him?  
  
He didn't know how long he sat there, wondering if he should mourn Jean's loss or not. Maybe it was an accident; maybe she was a hell of a lot stronger than she thought. Even she had told him she was afraid she couldn't control her powers. That had to have been what happened. She didn't mean to wipe everything out. Maybe she was briefly like him - she lost her temper, and everything in the immediate area paid for it.  
  
Why was he finding that hard so hard to swallow?  
  
He felt the vibrations in the building's metal shell, but he didn't actually care if he had company or not. He'd take care of them or he wouldn't - maybe all the dead bodies would scare them off. It was pretty apparent everyone died without a struggle; no one even had the potential to fight back against whatever overwhelming force had just wiped them all off the face of the world. Even knowing who they were, Logan felt it was a little cold of them all to just die, without a chance to fight or flee.  
  
Thanks to the forced air running through the complex he caught their scents as soon as they were inside, and while he was mildly surprised, he couldn't be bothered to get up. Were there any such things as surprises left? He felt completely wiped out, like he'd had all the shit kicked out of him.  
  
After a moment, the door slid open, and he found himself looking down the barrels of twin Glocks. "Hey Marc," he said, still not bothering to get up.  
  
Marc raised his guns, prior to holstering them. "Man, what did you do?"  
  
He held his hands wide before letting them fall, and stared at the static filling up the t.v. screen with digital snow. "I didn't do anything. You don't see any blood, do you?"  
  
Marc came inside, and Storm appeared in the doorway, along with Spider (what the fuck was he doing here?). "If you didn't do this, who did?" Storm asked. It wasn't quite an accusation, but close.   
  
He glanced at her, feeling weary to the pit of his soul. He finally figured out he was honestly done here. "Jean."  
  
Her pale eyes went wide, and Brendan, now in the doorway, said, "What? You don't mean Ms. Grey, do you? She's dead."  
  
"Jean wouldn't do this," Storm replied, looking stunned. He wondered if the implication was "But you would."  
  
"Umm, you're talking about a dead person." Brendan insisted, then paused. "Right?"  
  
The usual suspects filled out the room - Rogue, a pale Bobby, a slowly de-metaling Piotr. They all seemed a little shaken, as if the sight of all the   
  
dead they had to pass by had bothered them more than a full on battle ever would.   
  
"You're saying she's here?" Storm asked, looking around as if expecting Jean to pop up any second now.  
  
"Not anymore. She just …" What did she do? "… rescued me and left."  
  
"Left where?"  
  
He shrugged. "I was out cold. I have no idea."  
  
Marc had gone over to another console, and had been trying to make it function, but gave up with a slam of his fist. "What the fuck happened here? Did they still have time to self-destruct their system?"  
  
He let out a breathless laugh that had no humor in it at all. "No, Jean killed the computers too. I don't think it was on purpose, she just … took it all out." It couldn't have been on purpose. She knew how much he wanted to discover something true about his past. She wouldn't have gotten rid of any information about it deliberately; he had to believe that.   
  
"Now hold on," Rogue interrupted. "You're all saying she's not dead? Not only not dead, but powerful enough to wipe out a whole bunch of people and a computer system? That sounds more like Magneto."  
  
"He wouldn't save me," Logan pointed out in a desultory manner. "And hell, I wish that fuck would show up now. Jeannie would wipe him out."  
  
"She isn't dead?" Bobby repeated, clearly not sure how he should take it. "H-how long have you known this? Why weren't we told?"  
  
"And how did she get this powerful?" Rogue interjected.  
  
Storm was just staring at him as if she was going to slug him for lying to her, but she was slowly starting to accept it. If he had killed all these people, there'd have been blood; lots of blood. All these deaths were perfectly bloodless - well, except for Delirium, who probably got to find out what happened when someone made telepathic contact with a god, times twelve. But they hadn't gone far enough into the base to find that room yet. "What were they doing to you?" Storm finally asked.  
  
Was she trying to reason it out? Trying to figure out what could ever be so bad enough that Jean would simply snap? He shook his head. "Just a little telepathic play time. Nothing new."  
  
"Well, they must have pissed her off big time," Marc said. "She really toasted this place."  
  
"Is anyone gonna tell us what is going on?" Rogue demanded.  
  
Logan slumped in the chair, and wondered if anyone was ever going to come up with an answer they could all live with.  
  
15  
  
Marcus had thought about asking them to drop him off in Baltimore, but it seemed insensitive. Besides, Storm was bound to say no.  
  
Logan was unusually quiet all the way back to New York; he seemed numb. He'd tried to get him to talk about it, but he had no desire to talk about anything. The rumor in the cockpit was Logan had been tortured again, hence his unusually subdued nature, but Marc was pretty sure they were off. Physical pain was something Logan dealt with all the time; of course he could take it. This was all about Jean.  
  
If he ever encountered that bint, he didn't care how powerful she was now - he'd punch her in the nose. If she was so fucking godly now, couldn't she see how much she was haunting him, like a guilty conscience? She must have been able to tell, hence Marc's desire to smack her - she was doing it on purpose. She had to be. But why? What could she possibly get from toying with Logan?  
  
He let Logan be; the poor guy had had enough shit dumped on him lately. Rogue kept trying to bug him into talking, but once she got the "Keep talking and die" look, she backed off.   
  
By the time they landed, Logan was the first off the jet, barely even waiting for the landing ramp to fully deploy. He seemed to be in a hurry to escape all the people, and again Marc felt bad for the guy. All he wanted to do was be left alone, and all others wanted to do was fuck with him.  
  
As he disembarked, eerie little Spider followed close behind, and said, "Umm, Mr. Drury, may I have a word?"  
  
How British of him. "Marcus. And yeah, sure, you can have more than one word - they're pretty cheap."  
  
Spider's weird face remained expressionless. "Cute. Anyways, a moment?" He gestured to the side of the docking bay - or whatever the fuck this was - and they both moved out of general view as the rest of the Wonder Squad trailed off the plane, gripped by an awkward silence. Some were trying to digest the fact that Jean was saved by a friend of Bob's that was no longer a friend of Bob's; some were grappling with not being told about it; others were grappling with the knowledge of what this "new" Jean had done, and Logan's broken reaction to it all. Spider played it close to his vest; if any of this bothered him, it didn't show. But then again, Marcus had no idea how to read his facial expressions yet. His body temperature was slightly above normal, and didn't spike or variegate too much, making him rather Logan-ish in his body temperature reading,, except Logan's temperature - while bizarrely uniform - was slightly cooler than normal.   
  
"What's up?" Marc asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He still didn't know what his powers were, but he figured if he was going to give him shit, he could take him.  
  
Spider glanced around, to make sure no one else was listening, then replied, in a low voice, " Unlike poor Logan, I remember what the Organization took from me. I want to hurt them badly, Mr … Marcus. I was wondering if you could be persuaded to give me your program algorithms, or, lacking that, help me hunt down and nail these fuckers. I want them to bleed."  
  
Marc grinned at him, looking past his narrow shoulders to confirm they had no nosy X-Men eavesdropping on them. "You know, Spider, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."  
  
****  
  
Logan found a cell phone sitting on his bedside table, and figured it was something Xavier had put there, since Bob was not the type to avoid a grand entrance.  
  
He laid down on his bed, thinking he should try and sleep, but afraid to try. If Jean did show up, what would he say? "Thank you." "What the fuck's wrong with you?!" A combination of the two?  
  
Why couldn't he believe it was an accident? Because he wasn't hurt? Maybe he was - maybe he healed. How did he know?  
  
How did he know anything?  
  
He was staring up at the ceiling, feeling vaguely sorry for himself and for her, when the phone rang. It had a short, shrill ring, the kind that made him instantly want to throw it into the wall. He eventually answered it, if only to make the damn thing stop ringing. "What?" he snapped.  
  
"Wow, he even answers the phone aggressively," Yasha commented dryly.  
  
He sighed, closing his eyes, and felt strangely relieved. He was actually glad it was her. "How are you doin'?"  
  
"Better than you, from what I've heard. I'm sorry about Leonie."  
  
"Aren't we all?"  
  
She paused respectfully before asking, "You went after them, right?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Kill them?"  
  
"Jean did."  
  
"Did she? Good for her. But why aren't I getting a happy vibe from you?"  
  
"What is there to be happy about?" He sighed, rubbing his eyes. Dorn was right - he was drowning, and he wasn't sure he wanted to be saved. To prevent her from trying to delve into that - he really didn't want to have to think about it, not just talk about it - he asked, "Tell me about Mei Li."  
  
Judging from the thick silence, the non-sequitur threw her a little. "Mei Li? What is there to tell? She was restless, probably brighter than her station deserved, but she was a dutiful daughter. In spite of her unhappiness, she would have toed t he line, settled for the arranged marriage and played the perfect, submissive little Oriental flower to whatever rich old bastard bought her. She'd have lived a life of quiet desperation and died unnoticed, missed by no one."  
  
"That sounds contemptuous."  
  
"No … or at least it's not meant to be. After all, if it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be here."  
  
It was odd, but he didn't really think of Yasha as something different from Mei Li until this moment. "Tell me about vampires."  
  
"What don't you know? We are blood born parasites that feast on the living; we are killers who forever wear the skins of our first victim."  
  
"Now that is harsh."  
  
"Not really. We are sexless and bodiless things that borrow everything from our prey. We need their body to walk in this realm; we need the blood of others to keep going, to reproduce and spread our sickness; we need the personality and memories of our first kill to insinuate ourselves into your society, to make it easier to kill more. On our own we are nothing."  
  
Maybe this was what he knew he could love about her; she didn't flinch. Yasha could be brutal, in more ways than simply physical. "What about Angel?"  
  
She clicked her tongue. "Not an ideal example of the species. He's in a constant power struggle with the soul of the man whose body he wears. He has the genuine personality, for good or for ill. The rest of us just mimic, and eventually become a synthesis, depending on the receptivity. Although some vampires are unstable, and are easily convinced they are the person they wear -"  
  
"Receptivity?"  
  
"Yes. Sometimes, before they die, the host is receptive to us. This is especially true if they're very reserved, such as Mei Li. Everyone has a dark side, but some people are very scared of it. Apparently they hadn't heard Jung's theory about "owning your shadow". Anyways, those people are the ones you want to watch out for."  
  
Oddly enough, he got the feeling she was telling him something about Jean. Perhaps she was. Maybe this was why he had asked. "Why?"  
  
"Because when they finally get the opportunity or the reason to give in to their dark side - and they will; it's only a matter of time - they go overboard. That release feels like freedom, and they let it carry them away. The most vicious vampires were often milquetoasts when they were Human beings, people afraid to give in to passion or anything they considered unseemly. People like Mei Li."  
  
Or people like Jean, he thought darkly, aware now of why he had asked Yasha about this. He was looking for insight into what had happened to her - vampire, god, maybe, in the scheme of things, it was all the same. He had always thought of her as grabbed by Camaxtli, taken against her will … but what if she wasn't? What if she agreed to it? What if it felt like embracing the freedom she long denied herself? (In that case, wasn't it a good thing that 'Clops never embraced his inner fiend? He was so tightly wound, he'd probably explode in an orgy of evil.) "What about me?" He wondered. "Sometimes, I - I try, you know. But sometimes I'm overwhelmed by … rage, hate. I can't control myself; I'm not even sure I want to."  
  
"But you feel bad afterwards, yes?"  
  
"Sometimes. Sometimes I just feel insane." Had he ever admitted that to anyone?  
  
"The rules that apply to us don't apply to you."  
  
He wondered if by "us" she meant vampires, or herself and Jean. Either was possible. "Why not?"  
  
"Because you're a torture victim; because someone spent a lot of time and money trying to break you down and make you all dark side. You do try and control it, but you don't try and hide it either; you're actually doing remarkably well, all things considered."  
  
He wondered if he would always be qualified: "…considering …" "…in spite of…" "So why don't I feel that way?"  
  
"Because you wouldn't; because you're an interesting dichotomy of arrogance and self-hatred."  
  
"Oh jeeze, thanks."  
  
"You asked."  
  
"I'm sorry I did." But of course that wasn't completely true. He knew, by asking her, he was asking for trouble. Things must have been bad if a vampire was your island of sanity. Or maybe that was just an arrogant, Human way of thinking. "I wish you were here," he admitted.  
  
"Why don't you drop by?" she suggested, a hint of playfulness in her voice. "I'm in L.A. - use Bob's name to grab you a teleported. You'll be here before I hang up the phone."  
  
"L.A.? I thought you went back to Vancouver?"  
  
"No, no need. But don't worry, I'm not cheating on you with Bob."  
  
"Ha." He was tempted to say "Go ahead, I owe him one," but if he did, she might ask why. That wasn't really a conversation he wanted to have, although he thought she'd take it well enough. This was a no strings relationship, after all - he was Human, and she was vampire. How long could it last anyways? "What about you coming back here? We could meet up at a nice hotel, maybe somewhere in the city, and forget all about this shit." That sounded really good. Maybe he couldn't drink his troubles away, but sex was a wonderful diversion, and it was one of the few pleasures he hadn't been robbed of.  
  
"I don't know. Will you ever tell me what happened?"  
  
"I did tell you what happened."  
  
"No you didn't."  
  
He sighed heavily, and briefly tapped the phone against his forehead (not too hard, or he'd bust it). "I don't wanna talk about it right now, all right?"  
  
"Fine. But I will expect to hear the details when you can talk about it."  
  
"Deal." She was not without compassion, which was really odd for a vampire. No, scratch that; nowadays it was just odd, no matter the species. It was a hard world, getting more calloused every minute, which made her that much more remarkable. Out of simple curiosity, he asked, "You ever kill a god?"  
  
But Yasha was too used to oddity. Either she was indeed showing her age, or simply extremely jaded, because this non-sequitur didn't even faze her. "Not recently. Not ever, in fact. Lowly demons don't usually stand a chance against gods, especially my breed."  
  
"Oh? Vamps have a god weakness?"  
  
"No, but we're considered "half-breeds" by demons and gods alike, because we need Human bodies to survive on this plane. They swat us down like flies. We are, essentially, a race of bastards."  
  
"No wonder you're all so gung ho to kill things."  
  
"Oh yes. We vampires all had bad childhoods. We're full of bitterness, and lash out at society at a whole, which just fosters our neglect and discrimination." She coughed, and he admired her for being able to get this far with a deadpan voice and a surely straight face. After she composed herself, she said, "Sorry. Bit of toddler in my throat."  
  
He laughed, mainly because it was such an absurd thing to say. "You have a weird sense of humor, Yash."  
  
"I have a weird life. It helps." There was wisdom in that. "After a pause, she asked, "What god do you think we're gonna have to kill?"  
  
"No one. I was just thinking aloud."  
  
"Thinking aloud about theocide?"  
  
"There's a name for it?"  
  
"Oh yeah. God killing isn't exactly new. It's rare, but it ain't new."  
  
"I guess so." He'd never told her he'd helped Bob kill a god, had he? So it really wasn't new to him either. But why was he even thinking this? Jean was no god, and he'd never hurt her anyways. (Would he?) Besides, he knew he owed her for what happened at the base down in Mexico (he knew where they were as soon as they got outside, and the wall of heat had hit him like a fist). She did it for him - she killed all those people for him. (Right?)   
  
But which she had done it for him? The Jean before, or the Jean … after? He now had the sinking feeling they were two distinctly different people.  
  
"Why don't you get a move on?" Yasha suggested, breaking the silence. "Call me back from whatever hotel you pick- there's no way I could come back to the mansion anyways - I think Xavier's afraid I'll get puckish and eat one of the kids. When you call me back, I'll grab a spellcaster and get 'em to 'port me directly there, okay?"  
  
"You're up for that?"  
  
"'Course I am; I'm starting to get bored. But chop chop, before I get a better offer."  
  
He smiled as he sat up, feeling strangely better, even while painful thoughts battled for supremacy just beneath the surface of his mind. "I'm startin' to wonder what I'd do without ya, darlin'."  
  
"Oh, wither and die, I suspect." She then made a kissing noise. "Sayonara, meat heart." She hung up before he realized what she had said, but he laughed anyways.  
  
Even as he grabbed his coat and pocket the phone, he wondered how long he could avoid thinking about this - and how long he could avoid talking to Xavier about what Jean had become.  
  
And how much of it was potentially his fault. 


	8. Part 8

16  
  
Xavier didn't know which development was more troubling - Logan running off, or Spider leaving with Marcus.  
  
No; it was definitely Spider leaving with Marcus. Logan may have liked him, but the man had an insufferable amoral streak that didn't bode well. Spider's grief must have turned to rage, and now he was most likely seeking vengeance, with help from Marcus. That could only end in pain, but he didn't know Spider well enough to feel that he could interfere. Spider would have to learn the hard way, whether Xavier liked it or not. He just hoped he came to his senses before anyone was genuinely hurt, and he knew the door here was always open.  
  
Well, maybe not to Marcus; not until he got over himself.  
  
Currently, he was more troubled by what he had seen in Ororo's mind - the base, after Jean had seemingly returned (and left again). There was no proof of this, simply Logan's word, and he was hardly in good shape. She was clinging to the theory this was simply more mental manipulation, that the Organization wanted him to think that and it was some overall plot. It was actually a nice theory, but - if he was honest with himself - he couldn't accept it. Jean must have been more altered by her exposure to Camaxtli than any of them had ever realized.  
  
"Damn Bob," Ororo cursed. "He knew about this, didn't he? And he didn't tell us."  
  
"I don't know," he admitted. "I'd have think he'd have told Logan." But then again, Logan hadn't bothered to tell them about Jean "visiting" him, had he? Was he never going to trust them? Or was betrayal so deeply etched into his psyche that it was going to take years upon years for him to get to that point?  
  
Xavier had picked up on something Ororo couldn't - Logan felt some guilt surrounding what Jean had done. Did he blame himself? Why? Maybe he blamed himself for introducing Bob to them in the first place, the catalyst to all that was to come.  
  
"What are we going to do?" Ororo wondered, wringing her hands and working hard not to bite her fingernails - a bad habit she gave up years ago, but was desperate to start again. Jean had been her best friend; she was afraid she no longer recognized her. "Do you think there's any way we can save her?"  
  
'You're assuming she wants to be saved,' he thought, but didn't say. Why had he even thought that? "If there is a way, we will find it," he assured her, sounding more confident than he felt.  
  
He wondered if Cerebro could get him in touch with the mind of a god.  
  
****  
  
The tiny, delicate bones - as fragile as spun sugar - were thrown into the circle, which kept oozing out of shape. Damn it - didn't Humans have decent clotting factors anymore?   
  
The woman who sat at the edge of the circle, casting the bones, was approximately four feet tall and had a form that was half-humanoid, half lion. Her strangely egg shaped, pale blue face was devoid of eyes and nose, or ears; any feature at all, not even hair. She did have a knife slash of a mouth that only revealed itself when she spoke, and she did that rarely, mainly because her voice could kill in mixed company. "It was Camaxtli," she pronounced gravely. "Or his energy at least - it did manifest on the Earth plane."  
  
Osiris made a noise of disbelief deep in his throat, and shook his head. That poor son-of-a-bitch. He knew Eris hadn't really killed Camaxtli - like that bitch goddess could really surprise someone as crafty as Camaxtli. What he couldn't believe is that exiled sack of shit Bob had actually killed him - no fucking way; he wasn't buying that.  
  
"Has it begun?" He asked, consulting the book of recent deaths on its marble pedestals. He thought that recent spate of men - who came in as one big clump, along with three females - tasted of Camaxtli's energy.  
  
The woman appeared to look at the bones with eyes she did not have. But Clotho had eyes that didn't need to manifest; she could see everything, whether she liked it or not, and generally she didn't. But it was her curse to do so, as well as the point of her existence. If you believed the Greeks, she was one of the Moirae - the "three fates" - who held the destiny of all, mortals and immortals alike, in their spindly hands. This wasn't exactly true (it wouldn't be mythology if it was true), but Clotho was certainly a good reader of what could generously be called destiny; there were rumors she could manipulate it, but she never said. She was one of the more taciturn gods. "Yes. An instability has developed; all will crumble from the outward radius."  
  
"Solid," he said, wiping his thumb along the vellum page and smearing the new blood spelling out the obscure names of Camaxtli's first sacrifices.  
  
He knew exactly how the other gods saw him: pathetic, a vulture, the carrion crow of the Highers. But he didn't mind, as that allowed him his peace and privacy. As they dismissed him as a necrophile with a pointless and morbid library, they overlooked the fact that not only he was he a death god, he was the most popular and well known of all the death gods - Cthulu had nothing on him. Stupid Humans - witches and warlocks, sorcerers and sorceresses - still called on him from the Earth plane, begging favors and making sacrifices and rituals in his name. He had a good segment of followers he could call on if he needed to.  
  
He did not resurrect the dead often, although it was within his power, and easy enough. No, he would only resurrect someone if he was sure their return would cause maximum pain and chaos for all involved, and eventually lead to more deaths. A three-for-one sort of deal. He rather liked Camaxtli - he brought him a lot of bodies.  
  
Bob hardly brought him any at all. He was on the shit list.  
  
Unlike Camaxtli, he had no desire to run the Higher Realms, or a place as low and pedestrian as Earth. Fuck that - who needed the hassle for so little pay off? Truth be told, he really didn't want anything. He had his niche, and he rather enjoyed it. He never went hungry.  
  
But what he did love was chaos and pain; it equaled more bodies. Lots and lots of body; an endless supply. And if anyone wanted to bust his ass about this, he was clean - he had nothing to do with Camaxtli having an avatar, or dying, or passing on his powers. Nor did he have anything to do with the said avatar's decision to return to the Earth plane, however briefly.  
  
Did Bob neglect to tell the avatar that the return of Camaxtli would cause an energy instability that would threaten the dimensional balance? That, according to those who did silly things like prophesizing, that Cammy's return would be a minor catastrophe, a potential class four apocalyptic event?   
  
Oh, wait - that fallen bastard missed that meeting, didn't he? Aww, what a shame.  
  
Of course, nothing was actually written in stone (although you couldn't tell Clotho that - she might unhinge her jaw and bite your head off). It was possible some extremely powerful do-gooders, maybe a misguided god or two, could head it off before it became a terminal imbalance, but it was highly unlikely. Still, he really didn't care if it completed its cycle, or was cut off in the middle: while it happened, there would be deaths by the score. It would be like the Black Death or the Spanish Inquisition, only better.  
  
What the minor gods like Bob didn't understand was it was great to be a death god - you never needed to do anything. Time was always on your side. Either entropy provided the cataclysm or it didn't, but either way, everything eventually died and came straight to him. Inevitably, he controlled it all.  
  
He smeared the blood onto his lower lip, still tasting the lingering sensation of Camaxtli's energy, and watched the names reform themselves on the page, soak through, the blood rapidly aging to a rusty brown, headed towards its inevitable black. He wondered if he could exacerbate the chaos by calling on his Human followers. They knew his power; they knew disobedience was a fate worse than death … and if they did die, they were coming straight to him. That was both a blessing and a hideous damnation.  
  
Eris could, in theory, shut it all down. But she wouldn't, because she - like all the other Highers - believed herself to be infallible, therefore Cammy had died when she killed him, and there was no energy left. If Bob tried to convince her otherwise, he'd be lucky to get away with a severe beating. Gods were always right, they were never wrong - especially when they fucked up.  
  
"Feel like playing a game?" He asked Clotho, turning back around to face the cat pawed goddess. But she was gone already, faded back into night, taking her bones with her. All he had left was a rough semi-circle of blood on his marble floor, currently being lapped up by the vines as they desperately stretched towards it, craving its charged sustenance.  
  
Oh well. He didn't need her, and she could always play her own games. She always did, didn't she? No matter. He could release his hounds of death at any time, and simply sit back and reap the rewards. Even if they died, he still won. And as one personification of death, he himself could never really die; the best anyone could do was make him sit something out for a bit. How could death ever lose?   
  
The players were all in their places, and the stage was set, whether any of those short-sighted creatures knew it or not.  
  
Let the end begin.  
  
____  
  
The End (?)  
  
____  
  
(Oh, come on - like I'm going to leave a cliffhanger like that forever…) 


End file.
